ESSAYS >» 



IN A 



SERIES OF LETTERS. 



JOHN FOSTER, 

AUTHOR OF 'AN ESSAY ON POPULAR IGNORANCE,' &C. 



THE TENTH EDITION. 



P LONDON: 
HOLDSWORTH AND BALL, 

AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW. 



MDCCC XXXIII. 



T^\^lo5 






)%3> 



R. CLA^, RIJJTER, BREAD-STREET-HIT.L 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



Perhaps it will be thought that pieces 
written so much in the manner of set com- 
positions as the following, should not have 
been denominated Letters ; it may therefore 
be proper to say, that they are so called 
because they were actually addressed to a 
friend. They were written however with an 
intention to put them in print, if, when they 
were finished, the writer could persuade him- 
self that they deserved it ; and the temper of 
even the most inconsiderable pretenders to 
literature in these times is too well known 
for any one to be surprised that he could so 
persuade himself. 

When he began these letters, his intention 
was to confine himself within such limits, that 
essays on twelve or fifteen subjects might be 
comprised in a volume. But he soon found that 
so narrow a space would exclude many illus- 
trations not less appropriate or useful than any 
which would be introduced. 



IV ADVERTISEMENT. 

It will not seem a very natural manner 
of commencing a course of letters to a friend, 
to enter formally on a subject in the first 
sentence. In excuse for this abruptness it 
may be mentioned, that there was an intro- 
ductory letter ; but as it was written in the 
presumption that a considerable variety of 
subjects would be treated in the compass of 
a moderate number of letters, it is omitted, 
as not being adapted to precede what is exe- 
cuted in a manner so different from the design. 

When writing which has occupied a con- 
siderable length, and has been interrupted by 
considerable intervals, of time, which is also 
on very different subjects, and was perhaps 
meditated under the influence of different cir- 
cumstances, is at last all gone over in one 
short course of perusal, this immediate suc- 
cession and close comparison make the writer 
sensible of some things of which he was not 
aware in the slow separate stages of the pro- 
gress. On thus bringing the following essays 
under one review, the writer perceives some 
reason to apprehend, that the spirit of the 
third may appear so different from that of the 
second, as to give an impression of something 
like inconsistency. The second may be thought 
to have an appearance of representing that a 
man may effect almost every thing, the third 
that he can effect scarcely any thing. But 
the writer would say, that the one does not 



ADVERTISEMENT. V 

assert the efficacy of human resolution and 
effort under the same conditions under which 
the other asserts their inefficacy ; and that 
therefore there is no real contrariety between 
the principles of the two essays. From the 
evidence of history and familiar experience 
we know that, under certain conditions, and 
within certain limits, (strait ones indeed), an 
enlightened and resolute human spirit has great 
power, this greatness being relative to the 
measures of things within a small sphere ; 
while it is equally obvious that this enlight- 
ened and resolute spirit, if disregarding these 
conditions, and attempting to extend its agency 
over a much wider sphere, shall find its power 
baffled and annihilated, till it draws back within 
the boundary. Now the great power of the 
human mind within the narrow limit being for- 
cibly and largely insisted on at one time, and 
its impotence beyond that limit, at another, 
the assemblage of sentiments and exemplifica- 
tions most adapted to illustrate, (and without 
real or considerable exaggeration,) that power 
alone, will form apparently so strong a con- 
trast with the assemblage of thoughts and facts 
proper for illustrating that imbecility alone, 
that on a superficial view the two represen- 
tations may appear contradictory. The author 
appeals to the experience of such thinking 
men as are accustomed to commit their thoughts 
to writing, whether sometimes, on comparing 

b 



VI ADVERTISEMENT. 

the pages in which they had endeavoured to 
place one truth in the strongest light, with 
those in which they have endeavoured a strong 
but yet not extravagant exhibition of another, 
they have not felt a momentary difficulty to 
reconcile them, even while satisfied of the sub- 
stantial justness of both. The whole doctrine 
on any extensive moral subject necessarily 
includes two views which may be considered 
as its extremes ; and if these are strongly 
stated quite apart from their relations to each 
other, both the representations may be per- 
fectly true, and yet may require, in order to 
the reader's perceiving their consistency, a re- 
collection of many intermediate ideas. 

In the fourth essay, it was not intended to 
take a comprehensive or systematic view of the 
causes contributing to prevent the candid at- 
tention and the cordial admission due to evan- 
gelical religion, but simply to select a few which 
had particularly attracted the writer's observa- 
tion. One or two more would have been spe- 
cified and slightly illustrated, if the essay had 
not been already too long. 



ADVERTISEMENT 



TO THE NINTH EDITION. 



As it is signified in the title-page that the 
book is corrected in this edition, it may not be 
impertinent to indicate by a few sentences the 
nature and amount of the correction. After 
a revisal which introduced a number of small 
verbal alterations in one of the later of the 
preceding editions, the writer had been wil- 
ling to believe himself excused from any re- 
petition of that kind of task. But when it 
was becoming probable that the new edition 
now printed would be called for, an acute 
literary friend strongly recommended one more 
and a final revisal ; enforcing his recommenda- 
tion by pointing out, in various places, what 

the writer readily acknowledged to be faults 

b 2 



Vlll ADVERTISEMENT TO 



in the composition. This determined him to 
try the effect of a careful inspection through- 
out with a view to such an abatement of the 
imperfections of the book, as might make him 
decidedly content to let it go without any 
future revision. 

In this operation there has been no attempt 
at novelty beyond such slight changes and 
diminutive additions as appeared necessary in 
order to give a more exact or full expression of 
the sense. There is not, probably, more of any 
thing that could properly be called new, than 
might be contained in half-a-dozen pages. Cor- 
rection, in the strict sense, has been the object. 
Sentences, of ill-ordered construction, or loose 
or inconsequential in their connexion, have 
been attempted to be reformed. In some in- 
stances a sentence has been abbreviated, in 
others a little extended by the insertion of an 
explanatory or qualifying clause. Here and 
there a sentence has been substituted for one 
that was not easily reducible to the exact 
direction of the line of thought, or appeared 
feeble in expression. In several instances some 
modification has been required, to obviate a 



THE NINTH EDITION. IX 

seeming or real inconsistency with what is said 
in other places. This part of the process may 
have taken off in such instances somewhat of 
the cast of force and spirit, exhibited or at- 
tempted in the former mode of expression ; and 
might have been objected to as a deterioration, 
by a person not aware of the reason for the 
change. Here and there an epithet, or a com- 
bination of words, bordering on extravagance, 
has yielded to the dictate of the maturer judg- 
ment, or more fastidious taste, or less stimu- 
lated feelings, of advanced life, and given place 
to a somewhat moderated language. The gene- 
ral course of thought is not affected by these 
minute alterations ; except that, (as the writer 
would persuade himself,) it is in parts a little 
more distinctly and palpably brought out. The 
endeavour has been to disperse any mists that 
appeared to lie on the pages, that the ideas 
might present themselves in as denned a form 
as the writer could give to any of them which 
had seemed obscure, and ineffective to their 
object, from indeterminate or involved enuncia- 
tion. In the revised diction, as in the original 
writing, he has designedly and constantly 



X ADVERTISEMENT. 

avoided certain artificial forms of phraseology, 
much in conventional use among even good 
writers; and aimed at falling on the words 
most immediately, naturally, and simply appro- 
priate to the thoughts. 

If his book be of a quality to impart any 
useful instruction, he will hope that the benefit 
may be conveyed with perhaps a little more 
clearness and facility, in consequence of these 
last corrections it will receive from his hand. 



January, 1830. 



CONTENTS. 



ESSAY I. 

ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 

LETTER I. 

Affectionate interest with which we revert to our past life. — It 
deserves a brief record for our own use. — Very few things to be 
noted of the multitude that have occurred. — Direction and use 
of such a review as would be required for writing a Memoir. — 
Importance of our past life considered as the beginning of an 
endless duration of existence. — General deficiency of self-observa- 
tion. — Oblivion of the greatest number of our past feelings. — 
Occasional glimpses of vivid recollection. — Associations with 
things and places. — The different and unknown associations of 
different persons with the same places Page 1. 

LETTER II. 

All past life an education. — Discipline and influence from — direct 
instruction — companionship — books — scenes of nature — and the 
state of society , p. 13 

LETTER in. 

Very powerful impressions sometimes from particular facts, tending 
to form discriminated characters. — Yet very few strongly discri- 
minated and individual characters found. — Most persons belong 
to general classes of character. — Immense number and diversity of 
impressions, of indefinitely various tendency, which the moral 
being has undergone in the course of life. — Might be expected 
that such a confusion of influences would not permit the formation 
of any settled character. — That such a character is, nevertheless, 



Xll CONTENTS. 

acquired and maintained, is owing to some one leading determina- 
tion, given by whatever means, to the mind, generally in early life. 
— Common self-deceptive belief that we have maintained moral 
rectitude, and the exercise of sound reason, under the impressions 
that have been forming our characters p. 24 

LETTER IV. 

Most of the influences under which the characters of men are forming 
unfavourable to wisdom, virtue, and happiness. — Proof of this if 
a number of persons, suppose a hundred, were to give a clear 
account of the circumstances that have most effected the state of 
their minds. — A few examples — a misanthropist — a lazy preju- 
diced thinker — a man fancying himself a genius — a projector — an 
antiquary in excess — a petty tyrant p. 37 

LETTER V. 

An Atheist. — Slight sketch of the process by which a man in the 
humbler order of abilities and attainments may become one. . p. 45 

LETTER VI. 

The influence of Religion counteracted by almost all other influences. — 
Pensive reflections on the imperfect manifestation of the Supreme 
Being — on the inefficacy of the belief of such a being — on the 
strangeness of that inefficacy — and on the debasement and infeli- 
city consequent on it. — Happiness of a devout man p. 55 

LETTER VII. 

Self-knowledge being supposed the principal object in writing the 
memoir, the train of exterior fortunes and actions will claim but a 
subordinate notice in it. — If it were intended for the amusement 
of the public, the writer would do well to fill it rather with incident 
and action. — Yet the mere mental history of some men would be 
interesting to reflecting readers— of a man, for example, of a 
speculative disposition, who has passed through many changes of 
opinion. — Influences that warp opinion. — Effects of time and 
experience on the notions and feelings cherished in early life. — 
Feelings of a sensible old man on viewing a picture of his own 
mind drawn by himself when he was young. — Failure of excellent 
designs ; disappointment of sanguine hopes. — Degree of explicitness 
required in the record. — Conscience. — Impudence and canting false 
pretences of many writers of " confessions." — Rousseau .... p. 66 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

ESSAY II. 

ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 



LETTER I. 

Examples of the distress and humiliation incident to an irresolute 
mind. — Such a mind cannot be said to belong to itself. — Manner 
in which a man of decisive spirit deliberates, and passes into action. 
— Caesar. — Such a spirit prevents the fretting away, in harassing 
alternations of will, of the animated feelings required for sustaining 
the vigour of action. — Averts impertinent interference. — Acquires, 
if free from harshness of manner, an undisputed and beneficial 
ascendency over associates. — Its last resource inflexible pertina- 
city. — Instance in a man on a jury p. 89 

LETTER II. 

Brief inquiry into the constituents of this commanding quality. — 
Physical constitution. — Possibility, nevertheless, of a firm mind in 
a feeble body. — Confidence in a man's own judgment. — This an 
uncommon distinction. — Picture of a man who wants it. — This 
confidence distinguished from obstinacy. — Partly founded on expe- 
rience. — Takes a high tone of independence in devising schemes. — 
Distressing dilemmas . p. 103 

LETTER III. 

Energy of feeling as necessary as confidence of opinion. — Conduct* 
that results from their combination. — Effect and value of a ruling 
passion. — Great decision of character invests even wicked beings 
with something which we are tempted to admire. — Satan. — 
Zanga. — A Spanish assassin. — Remarkable example of this quality 
in a man who was a prodigal and became poor, but turned 
miser and became rich. — Howard. — Whitefield. — Christian mis- 
sionaries M p. 1 14 

LETTER IV. 

Courage a chief constituent of the character. — Effect of this in en- 
countering censure and ridicule. — Almagro, Pizarro, and De 
Luques. — Defiance of danger. — Luther. — Daniel. — Another in- 
dispensable requisite to decision is the full agreement of all the 
powers of the mind. — Lady Macbeth. — Richard III. — Cromwell. 
— A father who had the opportunity of saving one of two sons 
from death p. 126 



XIV CONTENTS. 

LETTER V. 

Formidable power of mischief which this high quality gives to bad 
men. — Care required to prevent its rendering good men uuconci- 
liating and overbearing. — Independence and overruling manner in 
consultation. — Lord Chatham. — Decision of character not incom- 
patible with sensibility and mild manners. — But probably the 
majority of the most eminent examples of it deficient in the kinder 
affections. — King of Prussia. — Situations in which it may be an 
absolute duty to act in opposition to the promptings of those 
affections '. p. 138 

LETTER VI. 

Circumstances tending to consolidate this Character. — Opposition. — 
Desertion. — Marius. — Satan. — Charles de Moor. — Success has the 
same tendency. — Caesar. — Habit of associating with inferiors. — 
Voluntary means of forming or conforming this character. — The 
acquisition of perfect knowledge in the department in which we 
are to act. — The cultivation of a connected and conclusive manner 
of reasoning. — The resolute commencement of action, in a manner 
to commit ourselves irretrievably. — Ledyard. — The choice of a 
dignified order of concerns. — The approbation of conscience. — Yet 
melancholy to consider how many of the most distinguished pos- 
sessors of the quality have been wicked .p. 148 



ESSAY III. 

ON THE APPLICATION OF THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 

LETTER I. 

Great convenience of having a number of words that will answer 
the purposes of ridicule or reprobation without having any precise 
meaning. — Puritan — Methodist — Jacobin. — The word Romantic 
of the greatest service to persons, who, wanting to show their scorn, 
have not wherewithal in the way of sense or wit. — Whenever this 
epithet is applied, let the exact meaning be demanded. — Does it 
attribute, to what it is applied to, the kind of absurdity prevalent 
in the works called Romances? — That absurdity was from the 
predominance, in various modes, of imagination over judgment. — 
Mental character of the early Romance writers. — Opposite character 
of Cervantes. — Delightful, delusive, and mischievous operation of a 
predominant imagination. — Yet desirable, for several reasons, that 
the imagination should have this ascendency in early life . . p. 169 



CONTENTS. XV 



LETTER II. 



One of the modes of this ascendency justly called Romantic, is, the 
unfounded persuasion of something peculiar and extraordinary in a 
person's destiny. — This vain expectation may he relative to great 
talent and achievement, or to great felicity. — Things ardently anti- 
cipated which not only cannot be attained, but would be unadapted 
to the nature and condition of man if they could. — A person that 
hoped to out-do rather than imitate Gregory Lopez, the hermit. — 
Absurd expectations of parents. — Utopian anticipations of philo- 
sophers. — Practical absurdity of the age of chivalry. — The extrava- 
gant and exclusive passion for what is grand p. 187 

LETTER III. 

The epithet applicable to hopes and projects inconsistent with the 
known relations between ends and means. — Reckoning on happy 
casualties. — Musing on instances of good luck. — Novels go more 
than half the length of the older Romance in promoting this per- 
nicious tendency of the mind. — Specimen of what they do in this 
way. — Fancy magnifies the smallest means into an apparent com- 
petence to the greatest ends. — This delusive calculation apt to be 
admitted in schemes of benevolence. — Projects for civilizing savage 
nations. — Extravagant expectations of the efficacy of direct instruc- 
tion, in the lessons of education, and in preaching. — Reformers apt 
to overrate the power of means. — The fancy about the omnipotence 
of truth. — Our expectations ought to be limited by what we actually 
see and know of human nature. — Estimate of that nature. — Preva- 
lence of passion and appetite against conviction p. 200 

LETTER IV. 

Christianity the grand appointed mean of reforming the world. — But 
though the religion itself be a communication from heaven, the 
administration of it by human agents is to be considered as a 
merely human mean, excepting so far as a special divine 
energy is made to accompany it. — Its comparatively small 
success proves in what an extremely limited measure that energy, 
as yet, accompanies it. — Impotence of man to do what it leaves 
undone. — Irrational to expect from its progressive administration 
a measure of success indefinitely surpassing the present state of its 
operations, till we see some signs of a great change in the Divine 
Government of the world. — Folly of projects to reform mankind 
which disclaim Religion.— Nothing in human nature to meet and 
give effect to the schemes and expedients of the moral revolution- 
ist. — Wretched state of that nature. — Sample of the absurd esti- 
mates of its condition by the irreligious menders of society . . p. 222 



XVI CONTENTS. 



LETTER V. 



Melancholy reflections. — No consolation amidst the mysterious eco- 
nomy but in an assurance that an infinitely good Being presides, 
and will at length open out a new moral world. — Yet many moral 
projectors are solicitous to keep their schemes for the amendment 
of the world clear of any reference to the Almighty. — Even good 
men are guilty of placing too much dependence on subordinate 
powers and agents. — The representations in this Essay not intended 
to depreciate to nothing the worth and use of the whole stock of 
means, but to reduce them, and the effects to be expected from 
them, to a sober estimate. — A humble thing to be a man. — Incul- 
cation of devout submission, and diligence, and prayer. — Sublime 
quality and indefinite efficacy of this last, as a mean. — Conclusion; 
briefly marking out a few general characters of sentiment and 
action to which, though very uncommon, the epithet Romantic is 
unjustly applied , p. 234 



ESSAY IV. 

ON SOME OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH EVANGELICAL RELIGION 
HAS BEEN RENDERED UNACCEPTABLE TO PERSONS OF CUL- 
TIVATED TASTE. 

LETTER I. 

Nature of the displacency with which some of the most peculiar fea- 
tures of Christianity are regarded by many cultivated men, who 
do not deny or doubt the divine authority of the religion. — Brief 
notice of the term Evangelical p. 251 

LETTER II. 

One of the causes of the displacency is, that Christianity, being the 
religion of a great number of persons of weak and uncultivated 
minds, presents its doctrines to the view of men of taste associated 
with the characteristics of those minds ; and though some parts of 
the religion instantaneously redeem themselves from that associa- 
tion by their philosophic dignity, other parts may require a con- 
siderable effort to detach them from it. — This easily done if the 
men of taste were powerfully pre-occupied and affected by the 
religion. — Reflections of one of them in this case, — But the men 



CONTENTS. XV11 

of taste now in question are not in this case. — Several specific 
causes of injurious impression, from this association of evangelical 
doctrines and sentiments with the intellectual littleness of the per- 
sons entertaining them. — Their deficiency and dislike of all strictly 
intellectual exercise on religion. — Their reducing the whole of reli- 
gion to one or two favourite notions, and continually dwelling 
on them. — The perfect indifference of some of them to general 
knowledge, even when not destitute of means of acquiring it ; and 
the consequent voluntary and contented poverty of their religious 
ideas and language. — Their admiration of things in a literary sense 
utterly bad. — Their complacency in their deficiencies. — Their in- 
judicious habits and ceremonies. — Their unfortunate metaphors 
and similes. — Suggestion to religious teachers, that they should not 
run to its last possible extent the parallel between the pleasures of 
piety and those of eating and drinking. — Mischief of such prac- 
tices. — Effect of the ungracious collision between uncultivated 
seniors and a young person of literary and philosophic taste. — 
Expostulation with this intellectual young person, on the folly and 
guilt of suffering his mind to take the impression of evangelical 
religion from any thing which he knows to be inferior to that 
religion itself, as exhibited by the New Testament, and by the 
most elevated of its disciples p. 260 

LETTER III. 

Another cause, the Peculiarity of Language adopted in religious dis- 
course and writing. — Classical standard of language. — The theo- 
logical deviation from it barbarous. — Surprise and perplexity of a 
sensible heathen foreigner who, having learnt our language ac- 
cording to its best standard alone, should be introduced to hear a 
public evangelical discourse. — Distinctive characters of this Theo- 
logical Dialect. — Reasons against employing it. — Competence of 
our language to express all religious ideas without the aid of this 
uncouth peculiarity. — Advantages that would attend the use of the 
language of mere general intelligence, with the addition of an ex- 
tremely small number of words that may be considered as necessary 
technical terms in theology ... .p. 292 



LETTER IV. 

Answer to the plea, in behalf of the dialect in question, that it is 
formed from the language of the Bible. — Description of the manner 
in which it is so formed.— This way of employing biblical language 
very different from simple quotation. — Grace and utility with which 



XV111 CONTENTS. 

brief forms of words, whether sentences or single phrases, may he 
introduced from the Bible, if they are brought in as pure pieces 
and particles of the sacred composition, set in our own composition 
as something distinct from it and foreign to it. — But the biblical 
phraseology in the Theological Dialect, instead of thus appearing 
in distinct bright points and gems, is modified and mixed up 
throughout the whole consistence of the diction, so as at once to 
lose its own venerable character, and to give a pervading uncouth- 
ness, without dignity, to the whole composition. Let the scripture 
language be quoted often, but not degraded into a barbarous com- 
pound phraseology. — Even if it were advisable to construct the 
language of theological instruction in some kind of resemblance to 
that of the Bible, it would not follow that it should be constructed 
in imitation of the phraseology of an antique version.' — License to 
very old theologians to retain in a great degree this peculiar dia- 
lect. — Young ones recommended to learn to employ in religion the 
language in which cultivated men talk and write on general sub- 
jects. — The vast mass of writing in a comprehensive literary sense 
bad, on the subjects of evangelical theology, one great cause of the 
distaste felt by men of intellectual refinement. — Several kinds of 
this bad writing specified p. 319 

LETTER V. 

A grand cause of displacency encountered by evangelical religion 
among men of taste is, that the great school in which that taste is 
formed, that of polite literature, taken in the widest sense of the 
phrase, is hostile to that religion. — Modern literature intended 
principally to be animadverted on. — Brief notice of the ancient. — 
Heathen theology, metaphysics, and morality. — Harmlessness of the 
two former ; deceptiveness of the last. — But the chief influence is 
from so much of the history as may be called Biography, and from 
the Poetry. — Homer. — Manner in which the interest he excites is 
hostile to the spirit of the Christian religion. — Virgil p. 340 



LETTER VI. 

Lucan. — Influence of the moral sublimity of his heroes. — Plutarch. — 
The Historians. — Antichristian effect of admiring the moral 
greatness of the eminent heathens. — Points of essential difference 
between excellence according to Christian principles, and the 
most elevated excellence of the Heathens. — An unqualified compla- 
cency in the latter produces an alienation of affection and admira- 
tion from the former p. 359 



CONTENTS. XIX 



LETTER VII. 



When a communication, declaring the true theory of both religion 
and morals, was admitted as coming from heaven, it was reasonable 
to expect that, from the time of this revelation to the end of the 
world, all by whom it was so admitted would be religiously careful 
to maintain, in whatever they taught on subjects within its cogni- 
zance, a systematic and punctilious conformity to its principles. — 
Absurdity, impiety, and pernicious effect, of disregarding this 
sovereign claim to conformity. — The greatest number of our fine 
writers have incurred this guilt, and done this mischief. — They are 
antichristian, in the first place, by omission ; they exclude from 
their moral sentiments the modifying interference of the christian 
principles. — Extended illustration of the fact, and of its conse- 
quences p. 375 



LETTER VIII. 

More specific forms of their contrariety to the principles of Revela- 
tion. — Their good man not a Christian — Contrasted with St. Paul. — 
Their theory of happiness essentially different from the evangeli- 
cal. — Short statement of both.— In moralizing on life, they do not 
habitually consider, and they prevent their readers from consider- 
ing, the present state as introductory to another. — Their consola- 
tions for distress, old age, and death, widely different, on the whole, 
from those which constitute so much of the value of the Gospel. — 
The grandeur and heroism in death, which they have represented 
with irresistible eloquence, emphatically and perniciously opposite 
to the christian doctrine and examples of sublimity and happiness 
in death. — Examples from tragedy p. 389 



LETTER IX. 

The estimate of the depraved moral condition of human nature is 
quite different in revelation and polite literature. — Consequently, 
the Redemption by Jesus Christ, which appears with such momen- 
tous importance in the one, is, in comparison, a trifle in the other. — 
Our fine writers employ and justify antichristian motives to action, 
especially the love of fame. — The morality of this passion argued. 
— The earnest repression of it shown to be a duty. — Some of 
the lighter order of our popular writers have aided the counter- 
action of literature to evangelical religion by careless or malignant 
ridicule of things associated with it. — Brief notice of the several 



XX CONTENTS. 

classes of fine writers, as lying under the charge of contributing to 
alienate men of taste from the doctrines and moral spirit of the 
New Testament. — Moral philosophers. — Historians. — Essayists — 
Addison. — Johnson. — The Poets. — Exception in favour of Milton, 
&c. — Pope. — Antichristian quality of his Essay on Man. — Novels. — 
Melancholy reflections on the Review. — Conclusion p. 419 



ESSAY I 



ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 



LETTER I. 

MY DEAR FRIEND, 

Every one knows with what interest it is natural 
to retrace the course of our own lives. The 
past states and periods of a man's being are 
retained in a connexion with the present by that 
principle of self-love, which is unwilling to relin- 
quish its hold on what has once been his. Though 
he cannot but be sensible of how little conse- 
quence his life can have been in the creation, 
compared with many other trains of events, yet 
he has felt it more important to himself than all 
other trains together ; and you will very rarely 
find him tired of narrating again the little history, 
or at least the favourite parts of the little history, 
of himself. 

To turn this partiality to some account, I re- 
collect having proposed to two or three of my 
friends, that they should write, each principally 
however for his own use, memoirs of their own 
lives, endeavouring not so much to enumerate 



& ON A MANS WRITING 

the mere facts and events of life, as to discri- 
minate the successive states of the mind, and 
so trace the progress of what may be called the 
character. In this progress consists the chief 
importance of life; but even on an inferior 
account also to this of what the character has 
become, and regarded merely as supplying a 
constant series of interests to the affections and 
passions, we have all accounted our life an in- 
estimable possession which it deserved incessant 
cares and labours to retain, and which continues 
in most cases to be still held with anxious attach- 
ment. What has been the object of so much 
partiality, and has been delighted and pained by 
so many emotions, might claim, even if the 
highest interest were out of the question, that a 
short memorial should be retained by him who 
has possessed it, has seen it all to this moment 
depart, and can never recall it. 

To write memoirs of many years, as twenty, 
thirty, or forty, seems, at the first glance, a very 
onerous task. To reap the products of so many 
acres of earth indeed might, to one person, be 
an undertaking of mighty toil. But the mate- 
rials of any value that all past life can supply to 
a recording pen, would be reduced by a discern- 
ing selection to a very small and modest amount. 
Would as much as one page of moderate size 
be deemed by any man's self-importance to be 
due, on an average, to each of the days that he 
has lived? No man would judge more than 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 6 

one in ten thousand of all his thoughts, sayings, 
and actions, worthy to be mentioned, if memory 
were capable of recalling them.* Necessarily a 
very large portion of what has occupied the 
successive years of life was of a kind to be 
utterly useless for a history of it ; being merely 
for the accommodation of the time. Perhaps 
in the space of forty or fifty years, millions of 
sentences are proper to be uttered, and many 
thousands of affairs requisite to be transacted, 
or of journeys to be performed, which it would 
be ridiculous to record. They are a kind of 
material for the common expenditure and waste 
of the day. Yet it is often by a detail of this 
subordinate economy of life, that the works of 
fiction, the narratives of age, the journals of tra- 
vellers, and even grave biographical accounts, 
are made so unreasonably long. As well might 
a chronicle of the coats that a man has worn, 
with the colour and date of each, be called his 
life, for any important uses of relating its his- 
tory. As well might a man, of whom I inquire 
the dimensions, the internal divisions, and the 
use, of some remarkable building, begin to tell 
me how much wood was employed in the scaf- 
folding, where the mortar was prepared, or how 
often it rained while the work was proceeding. 
But, in a deliberate review of all that we can 

* An exception may be admitted for the few individuals 
whose daily deliberations, discourses, and proceedings, affect 
the interests of mankind on a grand scale. 

b2 



ON A MAN S WRITING 



remember of past life, it will be possible to select 
a certain proportion which may with the most 
propriety be regarded as the history of the man. 
What I am recommending is, to follow the 
order of time, and reduce your recollections, 
from the earliest period to the present, into as 
simple a statement and explanation as you can, 
of your feelings, opinions, and habits, and of the 
principal circumstances through each stage that 
have influenced them, till they have become at 
last what they now are. 

Whatever tendencies nature may justly be 
deemed to have imparted in the first instance, 
you would probably find the greater part of the 
moral constitution of your being composed of 
the contributions of many years and events, 
consolidated by degrees into what we call cha- 
racter ; and by investigating the progress of the 
accumulation, you would be assisted to judge 
more clearly how far the materials are valuable, 
the mixture congruous, and the whole con- 
formation worthy to remain unaltered. With 
respect to any friend who greatly interests us, 
we have a curiosity to obtain an accurate account 
of the past train of his life and feelings : and 
whatever other reasons there may be for such 
a wish, it partly springs from a consciousness how 
much this retrospective knowledge would assist to 
complete our estimate of that friend; but our esti- 
mate of ourselves is of more serious consequence. 

The elapsed periods of life acquire import- 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 

ance too from the prospect of its continuance. 
The smallest thing rises into consequence when 
regarded as the commencement of what has 
advanced, or is advancing into magnificence. 
The first rude settlement of Romulus would 
have been an insignificant circumstance, and 
might justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome 
had not at length commanded the world. The 
little rill near the source of one of the great 
American rivers, is an interesting object to the 
traveller, who is apprised, as he steps across it, 
or walks a few miles along its bank, that this is 
the stream which runs so far, and which gra- 
dually swells into so vast a flood. So, while I 
anticipate the endless progress of life, and won- 
der through what unknown scenes it is to take 
its course, its past years lose that character of 
vanity which would seem to belong to a train of 
fleeting, perishing moments, and I see them 
assuming the dignity of a commencing eternity. 
In them I have begun to be that conscious 
existence which I am to be through endless 
duration ; and I feel a strange emotion of cu- 
riosity about this little life, in which I am setting 
out on such a progress; I cannot be content 
without an accurate sketch of the windings 
thus far of a stream which is to bear me on for 
ever. I try to imagine how it will be to re- 
collect, at a far distant point of my era, what I 
was when here ; and wish if it were possible to 
retain, as I advance, some clear trace of the 



6 ON a man's writing 

whole course of my existence within the scope 
of reflection ; to fix in my mind so strong an 
idea of what I have been in this original period 
of my time, that I may possess this idea in ages 
too remote for calculation. 

The review becomes still more important, 
when I learn the influence which this first part 
of the progress will have on the happiness or 
misery of the next. 

One of the greatest difficulties in the way of 
executing the proposed task will have been 
caused by the extreme deficiency of that self- 
observation, which is of no common habit either 
of youth or any later age. Men are content to 
have no more intimate sense of their existence 
than what they feel in the exercise of their 
faculties on extraneous objects. The vital 
being, with all its agency and emotions, is so 
blended and absorbed in these its exterior 
interests, that it is very rarely collected and 
concentrated in the consciousness of its ow 7 n 
absolute self, so as to be recognised as a thing 
internal, apart and alone, for its own inspection 
and knowledge. Men carry their minds as for 
the most part they carry their watches, content 
to be ignorant of the constitution and action 
within, and attentive only to the little exterior 
circle of things, to which the passions, like indexes, 
are pointing. It is surprising to see how little 
self-knowledge a person not watchfully observant 
of himself may have gained, in the whole course 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. / 

of an active, or even an inquisitive life. He 
may have lived almost an age, and traversed a 
continent, minutely examining its curiosities, 
and interpreting the half- obliterated characters 
on its monuments, unconscious the while of a 
process operating on his own mind, to impress 
or to erase characteristics of much more im- 
portance to him than all the figured brass or 
marble that Europe contains. After having ex- 
plored many a cavern or dark ruinous avenue, 
he may have left undetected a darker recess 
within where there would be much more 
striking discoveries. He may have conversed 
with many people, in different languages, on 
numberless subjects ; but, having neglected 
those conversations with himself by which his 
whole moral being should have been kept con- 
tinually disclosed to his view, he is better 
qualified perhaps to describe the intrigues of a 
foreign court, or the progress of a foreign trade ; 
to depict the manners of the Italians, or the 
Turks; to narrate the proceedings of the Jesuits, 
or the adventures of the gypsies ; than to write 
the history of his own mind. 

If we had practised habitual self- observation, 
we could not have failed to be made aware of 
much that it had been well for us to know. 
There have been thousands of feelings, each of 
which, if strongly seized upon, and made the 
subject of reflection, would have shewn us what 
our character was, and what it was likely to 



8 ON a man's writing 

become. There have been numerous incidents, 
which operated on us as tests, and so fully 
brought out our prevailing quality, that another 
person, who should have been discriminatively 
observing us, would speedily have formed a 
decided estimate. But unfortunately the mind 
is generally too much occupied by the feeling or 
the incident itself, to have the slightest care or 
consciousness that any thing could be learnt, or 
is disclosed. In very early youth it is almost 
inevitable for it to be thus lost to itself even 
amidst its own feelings, and the external objects 
of attention ; but it seems a contemptible thing, 
and certainly is a criminal and dangerous thing, 
for a man in mature life to allow himself this 
thoughtless escape from self-examination. 

We have not only neglected to observe what 
our feelings indicated, but have also in a very 
great degree ceased to remember what they 
were. We may wonder how we could pass 
away successively from so many scenes and con- 
junctures, each in its time of no trifling moment 
in our apprehension, and retain so light an im- 
pression, that we have now nothing distinctly to 
tell about what once excited our utmost emotion. 
As to my own mind, I perceive that it is be- 
coming uncertain of the exact nature of many 
feelings of considerable interest, even of com- 
paratively recent date ; and that the remem- 
brance of what was felt in very early life has 
nearly faded away. I have just been observing 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 9 

several children of eight or ten years old, in all 
the active vivacity which enjoys the plenitude of 
the moment without "looking before or after;" 
and while observing, I attempted, but without 
success, to recollect what I was at that age. I 
can indeed remember the principal events of the 
period, and the actions and projects to which my 
feelings impelled me; but the feelings them- 
selves, in their own pure juvenility, cannot be 
revived so as to be described and placed in 
comparison with those of later life. What is 
become of all those vernal fancies which had 
so much power to touch the heart? What a 
number of sentiments have lived and revelled in 
the soul that are now irrevocably gone ! They 
died like the singing birds of that time, which 
sing no more. The life we then had, now 
seems almost as if it could not have been our 
own. We are like a man returning, after the 
absence of many years, to visit the embowered 
cottage where he passed the morning of his life, 
and finding only a relic of its ruins. 

Thus an oblivious shade has spread over that 
early tract of our time, where some of the ac- 
quired propensities which remain in force to this 
hour may have had their origin, in a manner of 
which we had then no thought or consciousness. 
When we met with the incident, or heard the con- 
versation, or saw the spectacle, or felt the emo- 
tion, which were the first causes or occasions of 
some of the chief permanent tendencies of future 



10 ON A MAN'S WRITING 

life, how little could we think that long after- 
wards we might be curiously and in vain de- 
sirous to investigate those tendencies back to 
their origin. 

In some occasional states of the mind, we 
can look back much more clearly, and much 
further, than at other times. I would advise to 
seize those short intervals of illumination which 
sometimes occur without our knowing the cause, 
and in which the genuine aspect of some remote 
event, or long-forgotten image, is recovered with 
extreme distinctness in spontaneous glimpses 
of thought, such as no effort could have com- 
manded ; as the sombre features and minute 
objects of a distant ridge of hills become strik- 
ingly visible in the strong gleams of light which 
transiently fall on them. An instance of this 
kind occurred to me but a few hours since, 
while reading what had no perceptible connex- 
ion with a circumstance of my early youth, 
which probably I have not recollected for many 
years,- and which was of no unusual interest at 
the time it happened. That circumstance came 
suddenly to my mind with a clearness of repre- 
sentation which I was not able to retain to the 
end of an hour, and which I could not at this 
instant renew by the strongest effort. I seemed 
almost to see the walls and windows of a par- 
ticular room, with four or five persons in it, who 
were so perfectly restored to my imagination, 
that I could recognise not only the features, but 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 11 

even the momentary expressions, of their coun- 
tenances and the tones of their voices. 

According to different states of the mind too, 
retrospect appears longer or shorter. It may hap- 
pen that some memorable circumstance of very 
early life shall be so powerfully recalled, as to con- 
tract the wide intervening space, by banishing 
from the view, a little while, all the series of inter- 
mediate remembrances; but when this one object 
of memory retires again to its remoteness and in- 
difference, and all the others resume their proper 
places and distances, the retrospect appears long. 

Places and things which have an association 
with any of the events or feelings of past life, 
will greatly assist the recollection of them. A 
man of strong associations finds memorials of 
himself already traced on the places where he 
has conversed with happiness or misery. If an 
old man wished to animate for a moment the 
languid and faded ideas which he retains of his 
youth, he might walk with his crutch across the 
green, where he once played with companions 
who are now laid to repose probably in another 
green spot not far off. An aged saint may meet 
again some of the affecting ideas of his early 
piety, in the place where he first found it happy 
to pray. A walk in a meadow, the sight of a 
bank of flowers, perhaps even of some one 
flower, a landscape with the tints of autumn, the 
descent into a valley, the brow of a mountain, 
the house where a friend has been met, or has 



12 ON a man's writing 

resided, or has died, have often produced a much 
more lively recollection of our past feelings, and 
of the objects and events which caused them, 
than the most perfect description could have 
done ; and we have lingered a considerable time 
for the pensive luxury of thus resuming the long- 
departed state. 

But there are many to whom local associa- 
tions present images which they fervently wish 
they could exorcise ; images which haunt the 
places where crimes had been perpetrated, and 
which seem to approach and glare on the cri- 
minal as he hastily passes by, especially if in the 
evening or the night. No local associations are 
so impressive as those of guilt. It may here be 
observed, that as each one has his own separate 
remembrances, giving to some places an aspect 
and a significance which he alone can perceive, 
there must be an unknown number of pleasing, 
or mournful, or dreadful associations, spread 
over the scenes inhabited or visited by men. 
We pass without any awakened consciousness 
by the bridge, or the wood, or the house, where 
there is something to excite the most painful or 
frightful ideas in another man if he were to go 
that way, or it may be in the companion who 
walks along with us. How much there is in a 
thousand spots of the earth, that is invisible and 
silent to all but the conscious individual ! 

I hear a voice you cannot hear ; 
I see a hand vou cannot see. 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 13 



LETTER II. 

We may regard our past life as a continued 
though irregular course of education, through 
an order, or rather disorder of means, consisting 
of instruction, companionship, reading, and the 
diversified influences of the world. The young 
mind, in the mere natural impulse of its activity, 
and innocently unthinking of any process it was 
about to undergo, came forward to meet the 
operation of some or all of these plastic circum- 
stances. It would be worth while to examine 
in what manner and measure they have, respec- 
tively, had their influence on us. 

Few persons can look back to the early 
period when they were most directly the sub- 
jects of instruction, without a regret for them- 
selves, (which may be extended to the human 
race,) that the result of instruction, excepting 
that which leads to evil, bears so small a pro- 
portion to its compass and repetition. Yet 
some good consequence must follow the diligent 
inculcation of truth and precept on the youthful 
mind; and our consciousness of possessing cer- 
tain advantages derived from it will be a partial 
consolation, in the review which will comprise 



11 ON A MAN'S WRITING 

so many proofs of its comparative inefficacy. 
You can recollect, perhaps, the instructions to 
which you feel yourself permanently the most 
indebted, and some of those which produced the 
greatest effect at the time, those which sur- 
prised, delighted, or mortified you. You can 
partially remember the facility or difficulty of 
understanding, the facility or difficulty of be- 
lieving, and the practical inferences which you 
drew from principles on the strength of your 
own reason, and sometimes in variance with 
those made by your instructors. You can re- 
member what views of truth and duty were most 
frequently and cogently presented, what pas- 
sions were appealed to, what arguments were 
employed, and which had the greatest influence. 
Perhaps your present idea of the most con- 
vincing and persuasive mode of instruction, may 
be derived from your early experience of the 
manner of those persons with whose opinions 
you felt it the most easy and delightful to har- 
monize, who gave you the most agreeable con- 
sciousness of your faculties expanding to the 
light, like morning flowers, and who, assuming 
the least of dictation, exerted the greatest degree 
of power. You can recollect the submissiveness 
with which your mind yielded to instructions as 
from an oracle, or the hardihood with which 
you dared to examine and oppose them. You 
can remember how far they became, as to your 
own conduct, an internal authority of reason 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 15 

and conscience, when you were not under the 
inspection of those who inculcated them; and 
what classes of persons or things around you 
they contributed to make you dislike or approve. 
And you can perhaps imperfectly trace the 
manner and the particulars in which they 
sometimes aided, or sometimes counteracted, 
those other influences which have a far stronger 
efficacy on the character than instruction can 
boast. 

Some persons can recollect certain particular 
sentences or conversations which made so deep 
an impression, perhaps in some instances they 
can scarcely tell why, that they have been thou- 
sands of times recalled, while innumerable 
others have been forgotten ; or they can revert 
to some striking incident, coming in aid of in- 
struction, or being of itself a forcible instruction, 
which they seem even now to see as plainly as 
when it happened, and of which they will retain 
a perfect idea to the end of life. The most 
remarkable circumstances of this kind deserve 
to be recorded in the supposed memoirs. In 
some instances, to recollect the instructions of a 
former period will be to recollect too the ex- 
cellence, the affection, and the death, of the 
persons who gave them. Amidst the sadness of 
such a remembrance, it will be a consolation 
that they are not entirely lost to us. Wise 
monitions, when they return on us with this , 
melancholy charm, have more pathetic cogency 



16 ON a man's writing 

than when they were first uttered by the voice 
of a living friend. It will be an interesting 
occupation of the pensive hour, to recount the 
advantages which we have received from the 
beings who have left the world, and to reinforce 
our virtues from the dust of those who first 
taught them. 

In our review, we shall find that the com- 
panions of our childhood, and of each succeeding 
period, have had a great influence on our cha- 
racters. A creature so prone to conformity as 
man, and at the same time so capable of being 
moulded into partial dissimilarity by social an- 
tipathies, cannot have conversed with his fellow 
beings thousands of hours, walked with them 
thousands of miles, undertaken with them num- 
berless enterprises, smaller and greater, and had 
every passion, by turns, awakened in their com- 
pany, without being immensely affected by all 
this association. A large share, indeed, of the 
social interest may have been of so common a 
kind, and with persons of so common an order, 
that the effect on the character has been too 
little peculiar to be perceptible during the pro- 
gress. We were not sensible of it, till we came 
to some of those circumstances and changes in 
life, which make us aware of the state of our 
minds by the manner in which new objects are 
acceptable or repulsive to them. On removing 
into a new circle of society, for instance, we 
could perceive, by the number of things in which 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 17 

we found ourselves uncomplacent and uncon- 
formable with the new acquaintance, the modi- 
fication which our sentiments had received in 
the preceding social intercourse. But in some 
instances we have been in a short time sensible 
of a powerful force operating on our opinions, 
tastes, and habits, and reducing them to a greatly 
altered cast. This effect is inevitable, if a young 
susceptible mind happens to become familiarly 
acquainted with a person in whom a strongly 
individual character is sustained and dignified by 
uncommon mental resources; and it may be 
found that, generally, the greatest measure of 
effect has been produced by the influence of a 
very small number of persons ; often of one 
only, whose master-spirit had more power to 
surround and assimilate a young ingenuous 
being, than the collective influence of a multi- 
tude of the persons, whose characters were 
moulded in the manufactory of custom, and sent 
forth like images of clay of kindred shape and 
varnish from a pottery. — I am supposing, all 
along, that the person who writes memoirs of 
himself, is conscious of something more peculiar 
than a mere dull resemblance of that ordinary 
form and insignificance of character, which it 
strangely depreciates our nature to see such a 
multitude exemplifying. As to the crowd of 
those who are faithfully stamped, like bank 
notes, with the same marks, with the difference 
only of being worth more guineas or fewer, they 

c 



18 on a man's writing 

are mere particles of a class, mere pieces and 
bits of the great vulgar or the small ; they need 
not write their history, it may be found in the 
newspaper chronicle, or the gossip's or the 
sexton's narrative. 

It is obvious, in what I have suggested re- 
specting the research through past life, that all 
the persons who are recalled to the mind, as 
having had an influence on us, must stand be- 
fore it in judgment. It is impossible to examine 
our moral and intellectual growth without 
forming an estimate, as we proceed, of those 
who retarded, advanced, or perverted it. Our 
dearest relations and friends cannot be exempted. 
There will be in some instances the necessity of 
blaming where we would wish to give entire 
praise ; though perhaps some worthy motives 
and generous feelings may, at the same time, 
be discovered in the conduct, where they had 
hardly been perceived or allowed before. But, 
at any rate, it is important that in no instance 
the judgment be duped into delusive estimates* 
amidst the examination, and so as to compro- 
mise the principles of the examination, by which 
we mean to bring ourselves to rigorous justice- 
For if any indulgent partiality, or mistaken idea 
of that duty which requires a kind and candid 
feeling to accompany the clearest discernment of 
defects, may be permitted to beguile our judg. 
ment out of the decisions of justice in favour 
of others, self-love, a still more indulgent and 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 19 

partial feeling, will not fail to practise the same 
beguilement in favour of ourselves. But indeed 
it would seem impossible, besides being absurd, 
to apply one set of principles to judge of our- 
selves, and another to judge of those with whom 
we have associated. 

Every person of tolerable education has been 
considerably influenced by the books he has 
read ; and remembers with a kind of gratitude 
several of those that made without injury the 
earliest and the strongest impression. It is 
pleasing at a more advanced period to look 
again into the early favourites; though the 
mature person may wonder how some of them 
had once power to absorb his passions, make 
him retire into a lonely wood in order to read 
unmolested, repel the approaches of sleep, or, 
when it came, infect it with visions. A capital 
paf t of the proposed task would be to recollect 
the books that have been read with the greatest 
interest, the periods when they were read, the 
partiality which any of them inspired to a 
particular mode of life, to a study, to a system 
of opinions, or to a class of human characters ; 
to note the counteraction of later ones (where 
we have been sensible of it) to the effect pro- 
duced by the former ; and then to endeavour 
to estimate the whole and ultimate influence. 

Considering the multitude of facts, sentiments, 
and characters, which have been contemplated 
by a person who has read much, the effect, one 

c2 



20 ON a man's writing 

should think, must have been very great. Still, 
however, it is probable, that a very small num- 
ber of books will have the pre-eminence in our 
mental history. Perhaps your memory will 
promptly recur to six or ten that have contri- 
buted more to your present habits of feeling and 
thought than all the rest together. — It may be 
observed here, that when a few books of the 
same kind have pleased us emphatically, it is a 
possible ill consequence that they may create 
an almost exclusive taste, which is carried 
through all future reading, and is pleased only 
with books of that kind. 

It might be supposed that the scenes of na- 
ture, an amazing assemblage of phenomena if 
their effect were not lost through familiarity, 
would have a powerful influence on opening 
minds, and transfuse into the internal economy 
of ideas and sentiment something of a character 
and a colour correspondent to the beauty, vicis- 
situde, and grandeur, which press on the senses. 
They have this effect on minds of genius ; and 
Beattie's Minstrel may be as just as it is a cap- 
tivating description of the perceptions and emo- 
tions of such a spirit. But on the greatest 
number this influence operates feebly ; you will 
not see the process in children, nor the result in 
mature persons. That significance is unfelt, 
which belongs to the beauties of nature as some- 
thing more than their being merely objects of 
the senses. And in many instances even the 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 21 

senses themselves are so deficient in attention, 
so idly passive, and therefore apprehend these 
objects so slightly, undefinedly, and transiently, 
that it is no wonder the impressions do not go 
so much deeper than the senses as to infuse a 
mood of sentiment, awaken the mind to thought- 
ful and imaginative action, and form in it an 
order of feelings and ideas congenial with what 
is fair and great in external nature. This defect 
of sensibility and fancy is unfortunate amidst a 
creation infinitely rich with grand and beautiful 
objects, which can impart to a mind adapted and 
habituated to converse with nature an exquisite 
sentiment, that seems to come as by an emana- 
tion from a spirit dwelling in those objects. It 
is unfortunate, I have thought within these few 
minutes — while looking out on one of the most 
enchanting nights of the most interesting season 
of the year, and hearing the voices of a company 
of persons, to whom I can perceive that this soft 
and solemn shade over the earth, the calm sky, 
the beautiful stripes of cloud, the stars, the 
waning moon just risen, are things not in the 
least more interesting than the walls, ceiling, 
and candle-light of a room. I feel no vanity in 
this instance ; for perhaps a thousand aspects of 
night not less striking than this, have appeared 
before my eyes and departed, not only without 
awaking emotion, but almost without attracting 
notice. 

If minds in general are not made to be strongly 



22 ON a man's writing 

affected by the phenomena of the earth and 
heavens, they are however all subject to be 
powerfully influenced by the appearances and 
character of the human world. I suppose a child 
in Switzerland, growing up to a man, would 
have acquired incomparably more of the cast of 
his mind from the events, manners, and actions 
of the next village, though its inhabitants were 
but his occasional companions, than from all 
the mountain scenes, the cataracts, and every 
circumstance of beauty or sublimity in nature 
around him. We are all true to our species, 
and very soon feel its importance to us, (though 
benevolence be not the basis of the interest,) 
far beyond the importance of any thing that we 
see besides. Beginning your observation with 
children, you may have noted how instantly they 
will turn their attention away from any of the 
aspects of nature, however rare or striking, if 
human objects present themselves to view in 
any active manner. This " leaning to our kind" 
brings each individual not only under the in- 
fluence attending immediate association with a 
few, but under the operation of numberless in- 
fluences, from all the moral diversities of which 
he is a spectator in the living world ; a compli- 
cated, though insensible tyranny, of which every 
fashion, folly, and vice, may exercise its part. 

Some persons would be able to recollect very 
strong and influential impressions made, in 
almost the first years of life, by some of the 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 23 

events and appearances which they witnessed in 
surrounding society. But whether the operation 
on us of the formative power of the community 
began with impressions of extraordinary force 
or not, it has been prolonged through the whole 
course of our acquaintance with mankind. It 
is no little effect for the living world to have had 
on us, that very many of our present opinions 
are owing to what we have seen and experienced 
in it. That thinking which has involuntarily 
been kept in exercise on it, however remiss and 
desultory, could not fail to result in a number 
of settled notions, which may be said to be 
shaped upon its facts and practices. We could 
not be in sight of it, and in intercourse with it, 
without the formation of opinions adjusted to 
what we found in it ; and thus far it has been 
the creator of our mental economy. But its 
operation has not stopped here. It will not 
confine itself to occupying the understanding, 
and yield to be a mere subject for judgments to 
be formed upon; but all the while that the 
observer is directing on it the exercise of his 
judicial capacity, it is re-actively throwing on 
him various moral influences and infections. 



24 ON a man's writing 



LETTER III. 



A person capable of being deeply interested, 
and accustomed to reflect on bis feelings, will 
have observed in himself this subjection to the 
influences of what has been presented to him in 
society. Their force may have been sufficient in 
some instances to go far toward new-modelling 
the habit of the mind. Recollect your own 
experience. After witnessing some remarkable 
transaction, or some new and strange depart- 
ment of life and manners, or some striking dis- 
closure of character, or after listening to some 
extraordinary conversation, or impressive recital 
of facts, you may have been conscious that what 
you have heard or seen has given your mind 
some one strong determination of a nature re- 
sulting from the quality of that which has made 
the impression. It is true, that your receiving 
the effect in this one manner implies the exist- 
ence of an adapted predisposition, for many 
other persons might not have been similarly 
affected ; yet the newly acquired impulse might 
be so different from the former action of your 
mind, and at the same time so strong, as to give 
you the consciousness of a greatly altered moral 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 25 

being. In the state thus suddenly formed, some 
of the previously existing dispositions had sunk 
subordinate, while others, which had been 
hitherto inert, were grown into an imperious 
prevalence : or even a new one appeared to 
have been originated.* While this state con- 
tinues, a man is in character another man ; and 
if the moral tendency thus excited or created, 
could be prolonged into the sequel of his life, 
the difference might be such, that it would be 
by means only of his person that he would be 
recognised for the same ; while an observer 
ignorant of the cause would be perplexed and 
surprised at the change. Now this permanence 
of the new moral direction might be effected, if 
the impression which causes it were so intensely 
powerful as to haunt him ever after ; or if he 
were subjected to a long succession of impres- 
sions of the same tendency, without any power- 
fully opposite ones intervening to break the 
process. 

You have witnessed perhaps a scene of injus- 
tice and oppression, and have retired with an 
indignation which has imprecated vengeance. 
Now supposing that the image of this scene 
were to be revived in your mind in all its odious- 
ness, as often as any iniquitous circumstance in 
society should present itself to your notice, and 

* So great an effect, however, as this last, is perhaps 
rarely experienced from even the most powerful causes, 
except in early life. 



26 ON a man's writing 

that you had an entire persuasion that your 
feeling was the pure indignation of virtue ; or, 
supposing that you were repeatedly to witness 
similar instances, without diminution of the 
abhorrence by familiarity with them ; the con- 
sequence might be that you would acquire the 
spirit of Draco or Minos. 

It is easy to imagine the impression of a 
few atrocious facts on an ardent constitution, 
converting a humane horror of cruelty into the 
vindictive fanaticism of Montbar, the Bucca- 
neer. * A person of gentler sensibility, by 
accidentally witnessing a scene of distress, of 
which none of the circumstances caused disgust 
toward the sufferers, or indignation against 
others as the cause of the suffering, having 
once tasted the pleasure of soothing woes which 
perhaps death alone can terminate, might be led 
to seek other instances of distress, acquire both 
an aptitude and a partiality for the charitable 
office, and become a pensive philanthropist. 
The repulsion which has struck the observer of 
some extravagance of ostentatious wealth, or 
some excess of frivolity and dissipation, and 
acted on him again at sight of every succeeding 
and inferior instance of the same kind, with a 
greater force than would have been felt in these 
inferior instances, if the offensive effect did not 
run into the vestiges of the first indelible 

See Abbe RaynaTs History of ihc Indies, 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 27 

impression, may produce a cynic or a miser, 
a recluse or a philosopher. Numberless other 
illustrations might be brought to shew how 
much the characters of human beings, entering 
on life with unwarned carelessness of heart, are 
at the mercy of the incalculable influences which 
may strike them from any point of the surround- 
ing world. 

It is true that, notwithstanding so many in- 
fluences are acting on men, and some of them 
apparently of a kind and of a force to produce 
in their subjects a notable peculiarity, compara- 
tively few characters determinately marked from 
all around them are found to arise. In looking 
on a large company of persons whose disposi- 
tions and pursuits are substantially alike, we 
cannot doubt that several of them have met 
with circumstances, of which the natural ten- 
dency must have been to give them a deter- 
mination of mind extremely dissimilar to the 
character of those whom they now so much 
resemble. And why does the influence of such 
circumstances fail to produce such a result? 
Partly, because the influences which are of a 
more peculiar and specific operation are over- 
borne and lost in that wide general influence, 
which accumulates and conforms each individual 
to the crowd; and partly, because even were 
there no such general influence to steal away 
the impressions of a more peculiar tendency, 
few minds are of so fixed and faithful a 



28 ON A MAN*S WRITING 

consistence as to retain, in continued efficacy, 
impressions of a kind which the common course 
of life is not adapted to reinforce, nor prevailing 
example to confirm. The mind of the greater 
proportion of human beings, if attempted to be 
wrought into any boldly specific form, proves 
like a half-fluid substance, in which angles or 
circles, or any other figures, may be cut, but 
which recovers, while you are looking, its former 
state, and closes them up ; or like a quantity of 
dust, which may be raised into momentary re- 
luctant shapes, but which is relapsing, amidst 
the operation, towards its undefined mass. 

But if characters of strong individual peculi- 
arity are somewhat rare, such as are marked 
with the respective distinctions which discrimi- 
nate moral classes are very numerous ; the 
decidedly avaricious for instance ; the devoted 
slaves of fashion ; and the eager aspirers to 
power, in however confined a sphere, the little 
Alexanders of a mole-hill, quite as ambitious, 
in their way, as the great Alexander of a world. 
It is observable here, how much more largely 
the worse prominences of human character meet 
our attention than the better. And it is a 
melancholy illustration of the final basis of cha- 
racter, human nature itself, that both the dis- 
tinctions which designate a bad class, and those 
which constitute a bad individual peculiarity, 
are attained with far the greatest frequency and 
facility. While, however, I have the most entire 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 29 

conviction of this mighty inclination to evil, 
which is the grand cause of all the diversified 
forms of evil; and while, at the same time, I 
hold the vulgar belief of a great native difference 
between men, in the original temperament of 
those principles which are to be unfolded by 
the progress of time into intellectual powers and 
moral dispositions; I yet cannot but perceive 
that the immediate and occasional causes of the 
greater portion of the prominent actual cha- 
racter of human beings, are to be found in those 
moral elements through which they pass. And 
if one might be pardoned for putting in words 
so fantastic an idea, as that of its being possible 
for a man to live back again to his infancy, 
through all the scenes of his life, and to give 
back from his mind and character, at each time 
and circumstance, as he repassed it, exactly that 
which he took from it, when he was there be- 
fore, it would be most curious to see the frag- 
ments and exuvice of the moral man lying here 
and there along the retrograde path, and to find 
what he was in the beginning of this train of 
modifications and acquisitions. Nor can it be 
doubted that any man, whose native tendencies 
were ever so determinate, and who has passed 
through a course of events and interests adapted 
to develope and confirm them according to their 
determination, might, by being led through a dif- 
ferent train, counteractive to those native tenden- 
cies, have been an extremely different man from 



30 ON a man's writing 

what he now is. — J am supposing his mind to be 
in either case equally cultivated, and referring to 
another kind of difference than that which would 
in any case be made by the different measure or 
quantity, if I may express it so, of intellectual 
attainment. 

Here a person of your age might pause, and 
look back with great interest on the world of 
circumstances through which life has been 
drawn. Consider what thousands of situations, 
appearances, incidents, persons, you have been 
present with, each in its time. The review would 
carry you over something like a chaos, with all 
the moral, and all other elements, confounded 
together; and you may reflect till you begin 
almost to wonder how an individual retains the 
same essence through all the diversities, vicissi- 
tudes, and counteractions of influence, that 
operate on it during its progress through the 
confusion. While the essential being might, 
however, defy the universe to extinguish, absorb, 
or transmute it, you will find it has come out 
with dispositions and habits which will shew 
where it has been, and what it has undergone. 
You may descry on it the marks and colours of 
many of the things by which it has, in passing, 
been touched or arrested. 

Consider the number of meetings with ac- 
quaintance, friends, or strangers ; the number of 
conversations you have held or heard; the 
number of exhibitions of good or evil, virtue or 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 31 

vice; the number of occasions on which you 
have been disgusted or pleased, moved to 
admiration or to abhorrence ; the number of 
times that you have contemplated the town, the 
rural cottage, or verdant fields ; the number 
of volumes you have read ; the times that 
you have looked over the present state of the 
world, or gone by means of history into past 
ages ; the number of comparisons of yourself 
with other persons, alive or dead, and compari- 
sons of them with one another ; the number of 
solitary musings, of solemn contemplations of 
night, of the successive subjects of thought, and 
of animated sentiments that have been kindled 
and extinguished. Add all the hours and causes 
of sorrow which you have known. Through this 
lengthened, and, if the number could be told, 
stupendous multiplicity of things, you have ad- 
vanced, while all their heterogeneous myriads 
have darted influences upon you, each one of 
them having some definable tendency. A 
traveller round the globe would not meet a 
greater variety of seasons, prospects, and winds, 
than you might have recorded of the circum- 
stances capable of affecting your character, 
during your journey of life. You could not wish 
to have drawn to yourself the agency of a vaster 
diversity of causes ; you could not wish, on the 
supposition that you had gained advantage from 
all these, to wear the spoils of a greater number 
of regions. The formation of the character 



32 ON a man's writing 

from so many materials reminds one of that 
mighty appropriating attraction, which, on the 
fanciful hypothesis that the resurrection should 
re-assemble the same particles which composed 
the body before, must draw them from dust, 
and trees, and animals, from ocean, and winds. 

It would scarcely be expected that a being 
which should be conducted through such anar- 
chy of discipline, in which the endless crowd 
of influential powers seem waiting, each to take 
away what the last had given, should be per- 
mitted to acquire, or to retain, any settled form 
of qualities at all. The more probable result 
would be, either several qualities disagreeing 
with one another, or a blank neutrality. And 
in fact, a great number of nearly such neutra- 
lities are found every where ; persons, who, 
unless their sharing of the general properties of 
human nature, a little modified by the insigni- 
ficant distinction of some large class, can be 
called character, have no character. It is there- 
fore somewhat strange, if you, and if other 
individuals, have come forth with moral features 
of a strongly marked and consistently combined 
cast, from the infinity of miscellaneous impres- 
sions. If the process has been so complex, how 
comes the result to be apparently so simple ? 
How has it happened that the collective effect of 
these numerous and jarring operations on your 
mind, is that which only a few of these opera- 
tions would have seemed adapted to produce, 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 33 

and quite different from that which many others 
of them should naturally have produced, and 
do actually produce in many other persons ? 
Here you will perceive that some one capital 
determination must long since have been by 
some means established in your mind, and that, 
during your progress, this predominant deter- 
mination has kept you susceptible of the effect 
of some influences, and fortified against many 
others. Now, what was the prevailing deter- 
mination, whence did it come, how did it acquire 
its power ? Was it an original tendency and 
insuppressible impulse of your nature ; or the 
result of your earliest impressions ; or of some 
one class of impressions repeated oftener than 
any other ; or of one single impression of ex- 
treme force ? What was it, and whence did it 
come ? This is the great secret in the history 
of character ; for, it is scarcely necessary to ob- 
serve, that as soon as the mind is under the 
power of a predominant tendency, the difficulty 
of growing into the maturity of that form of 
character, which this tendency promotes or 
creates, is substantially over. Because, when a 
determined principle is become ascendent, it not 
only produces a partial insensibility to all im- 
pressions that would counteract it, but also 
continually augments its own ascendency, by 
means of a faculty or fatality of finding out 
every thing, and attracting to itself every cause 
of impression, that is adapted to coalesce with it 






34 ON a man's writing 

and strengthen it ; like the instinct of animals, 
which instantly selects from the greatest variety 
of substances those which are fit for their nutri- 
ment. Let a man have some leading and 
decided propensity, and it will be surprising to 
see how many more things he will find, and how 
many more events will happen, than any one 
could have imagined, of a nature to reinforce 
it. And sometimes even circumstances which 
seemed of an entirely counteractive order, are 
strangely seduced by this predominant principle 
into an operation that confirms it; just in the 
same manner as polemics most self-complacently 
avow their opinions to be more firmly established 
by the strongest objections of the opponent. 

It would be easy to enlarge without end on 
the influences of the surrounding world in 
forming the character of each individual. Yet 
while there is no denying that such influences 
are effectively operating, a man may be un- 
willing to allow that he has been quite so 
servilely passive, as he would probably find that 
he has been, if it were possible for him to 
make a complete examination. He may be 
disposed to think that his reason has been an 
independent power, has kept a strict watch, and 
passed a right judgment on his moral progress, 
has met the circumstances of the external world 
on terms of examination and authority, and has 
permitted only such impressions to be received, 
or at least only such consequences to follow 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 35 

from them, as it wisely approved. But I would 
tell him, that he has been a very extraordinary 
man, if the greater part of his time has not been 
spent entirely without a thought of reflecting 
what impressions were made on him, or what 
their tendency might be ; and even without a 
consciousness that the effect of any impressions 
was of importance to his moral habits. He may 
be assured that he has been subjected to many 
gentle gradual processes, and has met many 
critical occasions, on which, and on the con- 
sequences of which to himself, he exercised no 
attention or opinion. And again, it is unfor- 
tunately true, that even should attention be 
awake, and opinions be formed, the faculty 
which forms them is very servile to the other 
parts of the human constitution. If it could be 
extrinsic to the man, a kind of domestic Pythia, 
or an attendant genius, like the demon of So- 
crates, it might then be a dignified regulator of 
the influences which are acting on his character, 
to decide what should or should not be permitted 
to affect him, and in what manner ; though even 
then its disapproving dictates might fail against 
some extremely powerful impression which might 
give a temporary bias, and such repetitions of 
that impression as should confirm it. But the 
case is, that this faculty, though mocked with 
imperial names, being condemned to dwell in the 
company of far more active powers than itself, 
and earlier exercised, becomes humbly obsequious 

d 2 






36 ON a man's writing 

to them. The passions easily beguile this ma- 
jestic reason, or judgment, into neglect, or bribe 
it into acquiescence, or repress it into silence, 
while they receive the impressions, and while 
they acquire from those impressions that deter- 
minate direction, which will constitute the cha- 
racter. If, after thus much is done during the 
weakness, or without the notice, or without the 
leave, or under the connivance or corruption of 
the judgment, it be called upon to perform its 
part in estimating the quality and actual effect 
of the modifying influences, it has to perform 
this judicial work with just that degree of recti- 
tude which it can have acquired and maintained 
under the operation of those very influences. In 
acting the judge, it is itself in subjection to the 
effect of those impressions of which its office was, 
to have previously decided whether they should 
not be strenuously repelled. Thus its opinions 
will unconsciously be perverted ; like the answers 
of the ancient oracles, dictated for the imaginary 
god by beings of a very terrestrial sort, though the 
sly intervention could not be perceived. It is 
quite a vulgar observation, how pleased a man 
may be with the formation of his own character, 
though you smile at the gravity of his persuasion, 
that his tastes, preferences, and qualities, have 
on the whole grown up under the sacred and 
faithful guardianship of judgment, while, in fact, 
his judgment has accepted every bribe that has 
been offered to betray him. 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 37 



LETTER IV. 



You will agree with me, that in a compre- 
hensive view of the influences which have 
formed, and are forming, the characters of men, 
we shall find, religion excepted, but little cause 
to felicitate our species. Make the supposition 
that any assortment of persons, of sufficient 
number to comprise the most remarkable dis- 
tinctions of character, should write memoirs of 
themselves, so exactly and honestly telling the 
story, and exhibiting so clearly the most effec- 
tive circumstances, as to explain, to your discern- 
ment at least, if not to their own consciousness, 
the main process by which their minds have 
attained their present state. If they were to 
read these memoirs to you in succession, and 
if your benevolence could so long be maintained 
in full exercise, and your rules for estimating 
lost nothing of their determinate principle in 
their application to such a confusion of subjects, 
you would often, during the disclosure, regret to 
observe how many things may be the causes of 
irretrievable mischief. Why is the path of life, 
you would say, so haunted as if with evil spirits 
of every diversity of noxious agency, some of 



38 ON a man's writing 

which may patiently accompany, or others of 
which may suddenly cross, the unfortunate 
wanderer ? And you would regret to observe 
into how many forms of intellectual and moral 
perversion the human mind readily yields itself 
to be modified. 

As one of the number concluded the account 
of himself, your observation would be, I perceive 
with compassion the process under which you 
have become a misanthropist. If your juvenile 
ingenuous ardour had not been chilled on your 
entrance into society, where your most favourite 
sentiments were not at all comprehended by 
some, and by others deemed wise and proper 
enough — perhaps for the people of the millen- 
nium ; if you had not felt the mortification of 
relations being uncongenial, of persons whom 
you were anxious to render happy being indif- 
ferent to your kindness, or of apparent friend- 
ships proving treacherous or transitory ; if you 
had not met with such striking instances of 
hopeless stupidity in the vulgar, or of vain self- 
importance in the learned, or of the coarse or 
supercilious arrogance of the persons whose 
manners were always regulated by the conside- 
ration of the proportion of gold and silver by 
which they were better than you ; if your mor- 
tifications had not given you a keen faculty of 
perceiving the all-pervading selfishness of man- 
kind, while, in addition, you had perhaps a 
peculiar opportunity to observe the apparatus of 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 39 

systematic villany, by which combinations of 
men are able to arm their selfishness to oppress 
or ravage the world — you might even now, per- 
haps, have been the persuasive instructor of 
beings, concerning whom you are wondering 
why they should have been made in the form of 
rationals; you might have conciliated to your- 
self and to goodness, where you repel and are 
repelled; you might have been the apostle and 
pattern of benevolence, instead of envying the 
powers and vocation of a destroying angel. 
Yet not that the world should bear all the 
blame. Frail and changeable in virtue, you 
might perhaps have been good under a series of 
auspicious circumstances ; but the glory had 
been to be victoriously good against malignant 
ones. Moses lost none of his generous concern 
for a people, on whom you would have invoked 
the waters of Noah or the fires of Sodom to 
return ; and that Greater than Moses, who 
endured from men such a matchless excess of 
injustice, while for their sake alone he sojourned 
and suffered on earth, was not alienated to mis- 
anthropy, in his life, or at his death. 

A second sketch might exhibit external cir- 
cumstances not producing any effect more 
serious than an intellectual stagnation. When 
it was concluded, your reflection might be, if I 
did not know that mental freedom is a dan- 
gerous thing, peculiarly in situations where the 
possessor would feel it a singular attainment; 



40 ON a man's writing 

and if I did not prefer even the quiescence of 
unexamining belief, when tolerably right in the 
most material points, to the indifference or 
scepticism which feels no assurance or no im- 
portance in any belief, or to the weak presump- 
tion that darts into the newest and most daring 
opinions as therefore true — I should deplore that 
your life was destined to preserve its sedate 
course so entirely unanimated by the intellectual 
novelties of the age, the agitations of ever- 
moving opinion ; and under the habitual and 
exclusive influence of one individual, worthy 
perhaps and in a certain degree sensible, but of 
contracted views, whom you have been taught 
and accustomed to regard as the comprehensive 
repository of all the truth requisite for you to 
know, and from whom you have derived, as 
some of your chief acquisitions, a contented 
assurance that the trouble of inquiry is needless, 
and a superstitious horror of innovation, with- 
out even knowing what points are threatened 
by it. 

At the end of another's disclosure, you would 
say, How unfortunate, that you could not be- 
lieve there might be respectable and valuable 
men, who were not born to be wits or poets. 
And how unfortunate were those first evenings 
that you were privileged to listen to a company 
of men, who could say more fine things in an 
hour than their biographers will be able, even 
with the customary aid of laudatory fiction, to 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 41 

record them to have done in the whole space of 
life. It was then you discovered that you too 
were of the progeny of Apollo, and that you had 
been iniquitously transferred at your nativity 
into the hands of ignorant foster-parents, who 
had endeavoured to degrade and confine you to 
the sphere of regular employments and sober 
satisfactions. But, you would "tower up to 
the region of your sire." You saw what won- 
derful things might be found to be said on all 
subjects ; you found it not so very difficult 
yourself to say different things from other peo- 
ple : and every thing that was not common 
dulness, was therefore pointed, every thing that 
was not sense by any vulgar rule, was therefore 
sublime. You adopted a certain vastitude of 
phrase, mistaking extravagance of expression for 
greatness of thought. You set yourself to dog- 
matize on books, and the abilities of men, but 
especially on their prejudices; and perhaps to 
demolish, with the air of an exploit, some of the 
trite observations and maxims current in society. 
You awakened and surprised your imagination, 
by imposing on it a strange new tax of colours 
and metaphors ; a tax reluctantly and uncouthly 
paid, but perhaps in some one instance so 
luckily, as to gain the applause of the gifted (if 
they were not merely eccentric) men, into whose 
company you had been elated by admittance. 
This was to you the proof and recognition of 
fraternity : and it has since been the chief 



42 



ON A MAN S WRITING 



question that has interested you with each 
acquaintance and in each company, whether 
they too could perceive what you were so happy 
to have discovered, yet so anxious that the ac- 
knowledgment of others should confirm. Your 
own persuasion, however, became as pertinacious 
as ivy climbing a wall. It was almost of course 
to attend to necessary pursuits with reluctant 
irregularity, though suffering by the conse- 
quences of neglecting them, and to feel indig- 
nant that genius should be reproached for the 
disregard of these ordinary duties and employ- 
ments to which it ought never to have been 
subjected. 

During a projector's story of life and misfor- 
tunes, you might regret that he should ever 
have heard of Harrison's time-piece, the per- 
petual motion, or the Greek fire. 

After an antiquary's history, you might be 
allowed to congratulate yourself on not having 
fallen under the spell which confines a human 
soul to inhabit, like a spider in one of the cor- 
ners, a dusty room, consecrated with religious 
solemnity to old coins, rusty knives, illuminated 
mass books, swords and spurs of forgotten 
kings, and slippers of their queens ; with per- 
haps a Roman helmet, the acquisition of which 
was the first cause of the collection and of the 
passion, elevated imperially over the relics of 
kings and queens and the whole museum, as 
the eagle was once in "proud eminence" over 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 43 

subjugated kingdoms. And you might be in- 
clined to say, I wish that helmet had been a pan 
for charcoal, or had been put on the head of one 
of the quiet equestrian warriors in the Tower, 
or had aided the rattlings of Sir Godfrey, haunt- 
ing the baron's castle where he was murdered, 
or had been worn by Don Quixote, instead of 
the barber's basin, or had been the cauldron of 
Macbeth's witches, or had been in any other 
shape, place, or use, rather than dug up an 
antiquity, in a luckless hour, in a bank near 
your garden. 

I compassionate you, would, in a very bene- 
volent hour, be your language to the wealthy 
unfeeling tyrant of a family and a neighbourhood, 
who seeks, in the overawed timidity and unre- 
taliated injuries of the unfortunate beings within 
his power, the gratification that should have 
been sought in their happiness. Unless you 
had brought into the world some extraordinary 
refractoriness to the influence of evil, the pro- 
cess that you have undergone could not fail of 
being efficacious. If your parents idolized their 
own importance in their son so much, that they 
never themselves opposed your inclinations, nor 
permitted it to be done by any subject to their 
authority ; if the humble companion, sometimes 
summoned to the honour of amusing you, bore 
your caprices and insolence with the meekness 
without which he had lost his privilege ; if you 
could despoil the garden of some harmless 



44 ON a man's writing 

dependent neighbour of the carefully reared 
flowers, and torment his little dog or cat, with- 
out his daring to punish you or to appeal to 
your infatuated parents ; if aged men addressed 
you in a submissive tone, and with the appella- 
tion of " Sir," and their aged wives uttered their 
wonder at your condescension, and pushed their 
grandchildren away from around the fire for 
your sake, if you happened, though with the 
strut of supercilious pertness, and your hat on 
your head, to enter one of their cottages, per- 
haps to express your contempt of the homely 
dwelling, furniture, and fare ; if, in maturer life, 
you associated with vile persons, who would 
forego the contest of equality, to be your allies 
in trampling on inferiors ; and if, both then and 
since, you have been suffered to deem your 
wealth the compendium or equivalent of every 
ability, and every good quality — it would indeed 
be immensely strange if you had not become, 
in due time, the miscreant, who may thank the 
power of the laws in civilized society, that he is 
not assaulted with clubs and stones ; to whom 
one could cordially w 7 ish the opportunity and the 
consequences of attempting his tyranny among 
some such people as those submissive sons of 
nature in the forests of North America; and 
whose dependents and domestic relations may 
be almost forgiven when they shall one day 
rejoice at his funeral. 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 45 



LETTER V. 



I will imagine only one case more,, on which 
you would emphatically express your compas- 
sion, though for one of the most daring beings 
in the creation, a contemner of God, who ex- 
plodes his laws by denying his existence. 

If you were so unacquainted with mankind, 
that such a being might be announced to you 
as a rare or singular phenomenon, your conjec- 
tures, till you saw and heard the man, at the 
nature and the extent of the discipline through 
which he must have advanced, would be led 
toward something extraordinary. And you 
might think that the term of that discipline 
must have been very long ; since a quick train 
of impressions, a short series of mental grada- 
tions, within the little space of a few months 
and years, would not seem enough to have 
matured such a portentous heroism. Surely the 
creature that thus lifts his voice, and defies 
all invisible power within the possibilities of 
infinity, challenging whatever unknown being 
may hear him, and may appropriate that title 
of Almighty which is pronounced in scorn, to 
evince his existence, if he will, by his vengeance, 



46 ON a man's writing 

was not as yesterday a little child that would 
tremble and cry at the approach of a diminutive 
reptile. 

But indeed it is heroism no longer, if he 
know that there is no God. The wonder then 
turns on the great process, by which a man 
could grow to the immense intelligence which 
can know that there is no God. What ages and 
what lights are requisite for this attainment! 
This intelligence involves the very attributes of 
Divinity, while a God is denied, For unless this 
man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment 
in every place in the universe, he cannot know 
but there may be in some place manifesta- 
tions of a Deity, by which even he would be 
overpowered. If he does not know absolutely 
every agent in the universe, the one that he does 
not know may be God. If he is not himself 
the chief agent in the universe, and does not 
know what is so, that which is so may be God. 
If he is not in absolute possession of all the 
propositions that constitute universal truth, the 
one which he wants may be, that there is a 
God. If he cannot with certainty assign the 
cause of all that he perceives to exist, that 
cause may be a God. If he does not know 
every thing that has been done in the immea- 
surable ages that are past, some things may 
have been done by a God. Thus, unless he' 
knows all things, that is, precludes all other 
divine existence by being Deity himself, he 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 47 

cannot know that the Being whose existence 
he rejects, does not exist. But he must know 
that he does not exist, else he deserves equal 
contempt and compassion for the temerity with 
which he firmly avows his rejection and acts 
accordingly. And yet a man of ordinary age 
and intelligence may present himself to you with 
the avowal of being thus distinguished from the 
crowd ; and if he would describe the manner in 
which he has attained this eminence, you would 
feel a melancholy interest in contemplating that 
process of which the result is so prodigious. 

If you did not know that there are more than 
a few such examples, you would say, in view- 
ing this result, I should hope this is the con- 
sequence of some malignant intervention so 
occasional that ages may pass away before it 
return among men; some peculiar conjunction 
of disastrous influences must have lighted on 
your selected soul; you have been struck by 
that energy of evil which acted upon the spirits 
of Pharaoh and Epiphanes. But give your own 
description of what you have met with, in a 
world which has been deemed to present in 
every part the indications of a Deity. Tell of 
the mysterious voices which have spoken to you 
from the deeps of the creation, falsifying the 
expressions marked on its face. Tell of the 
new ideas, which, like meteors passing over the 
solitary wanderer, gave you the first glimpses 
of truth while benighted in the common belief 



48 on a man's writing 

of the Divine existence. Describe the whole 
train of causes which have operated to create 
and consolidate that state of mind, which you 
carry forward to the great experiment of futurity 
under a different kind of hazard from all other 
classes of men. 

It would be found, however, that those cir- 
cumstances, by which even a man who had been 
presented from his infancy with the ideas of 
religion, could be elated into a contempt of its 
great object, were far from being extraordinary. 
They might have been incident to any man, 
whose mind had been cultivated and exercised 
enough to feel interested about holding any 
system of opinions at all ; whose pride had been 
gratified in the consciousness of having the 
liberty of selecting and changing opinions ; and 
whose habitual assent to the principles of re- 
ligion, had neither the firmness resulting from 
decisive arguments, nor the warmth of pious 
affection.* Such a person had only, in the first 

* It will be obvious that I am describing the progress of 
one of the humbler order of aliens from all religion, and not 
that by which the great philosophic leaders have ascended 
the dreary eminence, where they look with so much com- 
placency up to a vacant heaven, and down to the gulf of 
annihilation. Their progress undoubtedly is much more sys- 
tematic and deliberate, and accompanied often by a laborious 
speculation, which, though in ever so perverted a train, the 
mind is easily persuaded to identify, because it is laborious, 
with the search after truth and the love of it. While, how- 
ever, it is in a persevering train of thought, and not by the 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 49 

place, to come into intimate acquaintance with 
a man, who had the art of alluding to a sacred 
subject in a manner which, without appearing 
like intentional contempt, divested it of its 
solemnity : and who had possessed himself of a 
few acute observations or plausible maxims, not 
explicitly hostile to revealed religion, but which, 
when opportunely brought into view in con- 
nexion with some points of it, tended to throw 
a degree of doubt on their truth and authority. 

hasty movements of a more vulgar mind, that they pursue 
their deviation from some of the principles of religion into 
a final abandonment of it all, they are very greatly mistaken 
if they assure themselves that the moral causes which con- 
tribute to guide and animate their progress are all of a sub- 
lime order ; and if they could be fully revealed to their own 
view, they might perhaps be severely mortified to find what 
vulgar motives, while they were despising vulgar men, have 
ruled their intellectual career. Pride, which idolizes self, 
which revolts at every thing that comes in the form of dictates, 
and exults to find that there is a possibility of controverting 
whether any dictates come from a greater than mortal source ; 
repugnance as well to the severe and comprehensive morality 
of the laws reputed of divine appointment, as to the feeling 
of accountableness to an all-powerful Authority, that will not 
leave moral laws to be enforced solely by their own sanc- 
tions ; contempt of inferior men ; the attraction of a few 
brilliant examples ; the fashion of a class ; the ambition of 
shewing what ability can do, and what boldness can dare — if 
such things as these, after all, have excited and directed the 
efforts of a philosophic spirit, the unbelieving philosopher 
must be content to acknowledge plenty of companions and 
rivals among little men, who are quite as capable of being 
actuated by such elevated principles as himself. 

E 



50 on a man's writing 

Especially if either or both of these men had 
any decided moral tendencies and pursuits of a 
kind which Christianity condemned, the friend of 
intellectual and moral freedom was assiduous to 
insinuate, that, according to the principles of 
reason and nature at least, it would be difficult 
to prove the wisdom or the necessity of some of 
those dictates of religion, which must, however, 
he admitted, be respected, because divine. Let 
the mind have once acquired a feeling, as if the 
sacred system might in some points be invali- 
dated, and the involuntary inference would be 
rapidly extended to other parts, and to the 
whole. Nor was it long probably before this 
new instructor plainly avowed his own entire 
emancipation from a popular prejudice, to 
which he was kindly sorry to find a sensible 
young man still in captivity. But he had no 
doubt that the deductions of enlightened reason 
would successfully appeal to every liberal mind. 
And accordingly, after perhaps a few months of 
frequent intercourse, with the addition of two or 
three books, and the ready aid of all the recol- 
lected vices of pretended christians, and pre- 
tended christian churches, the whole venerable 
magnificence of revelation was annihilated. 
Its illuminations respecting the Divinity, its 
miracles, its Messiah, its authority of moral 
legislation, its regions of immortality and retri- 
bution, the sublime virtues and devotion of its 
prophets, apostles, and martyrs, together with 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 51 

the reasonings of so many accomplished advo- 
cates, and the credibility of history itself, were 
vanished all away ; while the convert, exulting 
in his disenchantment, felt a strange pleasure 
to behold nothing but a dreary train of im- 
postures and credulity stretching over those 
past ages which lately appeared a scene of 
divine government ; and the thickest Egyptian 
shades fallen on that total vast futurity toward 
which the spirit of inspiration had thrown some 
grand though partial gleams. 

Nothing tempts the mind so powerfully on, 
as to have successfully begun to demolish what 
has been long regarded as most sacred. The 
soldiers of Caesar probably had never felt them- 
selves so brave, as after they had cut down 
the Massilian grove ; nor the Philistines, as 
when the ark of the God of Israel was among 
their spoils : the mind is proud of its triumphs 
in proportion to the reputed greatness of what 
it has overcome. And many examples would 
seem to indicate, that the first proud triumphs 
over religious faith involve some fatality of 
advancing, however formidable the mass of ar- 
guments which may obstruct the progress, to 
further victories. But perhaps the intellectual 
difficulty of the progress might be less than a 
zealous believer would be apt to imagine. As 
the ideas which give the greatest distinctness to 
our conception of a Divine Being are imparted 
by revelation, and rest on its authority, the 

e2 



52 ON a man's writing 

rejection of that revelation would in a great 
measure banish those ideas, and destroy that 
distinctness. We have but to advert to pure 
heathenism, to perceive what a faint conception 
of this Being could be formed by the strongest 
intellect in the absence of revelation ; and after 
the rejection of it, the mind would naturally be 
carried very far back toward that darkness ; so 
that some of the attributes of the Deity would 
immediately become, as they were with the 
heathens, subjects of doubtful conjecture and 
hopeless speculation. But from this state of 
thought it is perhaps no vast transition to that, 
in which his being also shall begin to appear a 
subject of doubt ; since the reality of a being 
is with difficulty apprehended, in proportion as 
its attributes are undefinable. And when the 
mind is brought into doubt, we know it easily 
advances to disbelief, if to the smallest plausi- 
bility of arguments be added any powerful 
moral cause for wishing such a conclusion. In 
the present case, there might be a very pow- 
erful cause, besides that pride of victory which 
I have just noticed. The progress in guilt, 
which generally follows a rejection of revela- 
tion, makes it still more and more desirable 
that no object should remain to be feared. It 
was not strange, therefore, if this man read 
with avidity, or even strange if he read with 
something which his wishes completed into 
conviction, a few of the writers, who have 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 53 

attempted the last achievement of presumptuous 
man. After inspecting these pages a while, he 
raised his eyes, and the Great Spirit was gone. 
Mighty transformation of all things! The lu- 
minaries of heaven no longer shone with his 
splendour ; the adorned earth no longer looked 
fair with his beauty ; the darkness of night had 
ceased to be rendered solemn by his majesty ; 
life and thought were not an effect of his all- 
pervading energy ; it was not his providence 
that supported an infinite charge of dependent 
beings ; his empire of justice no longer spread 
over the universe ; nor had even that universe 
sprung from his all- creating power. Yet when 
you saw the intellectual course brought to this 
signal conclusion, though aware of the force of 
each preceding and predisposing circumstance, 
you might nevertheless be somewhat struck 
with the suddenness of the final decision, and 
might be curious to know what kind of argu- 
ment and eloquence could so quickly finish the 
work. You would examine those pages with 
the expectation probably of something more 
powerful than subtlety attenuated into inanity, 
and, in that invisible and impalpable state, 
mistaken by the writer, and willingly admitted 
by the perverted reader, for profundity of rea- 
soning ; than attempts to destroy the certainty, 
or preclude the application, of some of those 
great familiar principles which must be taken 
as the basis of human reasoning, or it can have 



54 ON a man's writing 

no basis ; than suppositions which attribute 
the order of the universe to such causes as it 
would be felt ridiculous to pronounce adequate 
to produce the most trifling piece of mechanism ; 
than mystical jargon which, under the name of 
nature, alternately exalts almost into the pro- 
perties of a god, and reduces far below those 
of a man, some imaginary and undefinable agent 
or agency, which performs the most amazing 
works without power, and displays the most 
amazing wisdom without intelligence ; than a 
zealous preference of that part of every great 
dilemma which merely confounds and sinks 
the mind to that which elevates while it 
overwhelms it ; than a constant endeavour to 
degrade as far as possible every thing that is 
sublime in our speculations and feelings ; or 
than monstrous parallels between religion and 
mythology. You would be still more unpre- 
pared to expect on so solemn a subject the 
occasional wit, or affectation of wit, which would 
seem rather prematurely expressive of exulta- 
tion that the grand Foe is retiring. 

A feeling of complete certainty would hardly 
be thus rapidly attained ; but a slight degree 
of remaining doubt, and of consequent appre- 
hension, would not prevent this disciple of dark- 
ness from accepting the invitation to pledge 
himself to the cause in some associated band, 
where profaneness and vice would consolidate 
impious opinions without the aid of augmented 






MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 55 

conviction; and where the fraternity, having 
been elated by the spirit of social daring to 
say, What is the Almighty that we should serve 
him? the individuals might acquire each a 
firmer boldness to exclaim, Who is the Lord 
that / should obey his voice ? Thus easy it 
is, my friend, for a man to meet that train of 
influences which may seduce him to live an 
infidel, though it may betray him to die a 
terrified believer ; of which the infatuation, 
while it promises him the impunity of non- 
existence, and degrades him to desire it, im- 
pels him to fill the measure of his iniquity, 
till the divine wrath come upon him to the 
uttermost. 



LETTER VI. 

In recounting so many influences that ope- 
rate on man, it is grievous to observe that the 
incomparably noblest of all, religion, is coun- 
teracted with a fatal success by a perpetual 
conspiracy of almost all the rest, aided by the 
intrinsic predisposition of this our perverted 
nature, which yields itself with such consenting 
facility to every impression tending to estrange 
it still further from God. 



56 ON a man's writing 

It is a cause for wonder and sorrow, to see 
millions of rational creatures growing into their 
permanent habits, under the conforming efficacy 
of every thing which it were good for them to 
resist, and receiving no part of those habits 
from impressions of the Supreme Object. They 
are content that a narrow scene of a diminutive 
world, with its atoms and evils, should usurp 
and deprave and finish their education for 
endless existence, while the Infinite Spirit is 
here, whose sacred energy, received on their 
minds, might create the most excellent con- 
dition of their nature, and, in defiance of a 
thousand malignant forces attempting to stamp 
on them an opposite image, convey them into 
eternity in his likeness. Oh, why is it so 
possible that this greatest inhabitant of every 
place where men are living, should be the 
last to whose society they are attracted, or 
of whose continual presence they feel the 
importance ? Why is it possible to be sur- 
rounded with the intelligent Reality, which 
exists wherever we are, with attributes that 
are infinite, and not feel respecting all other 
things which may be attempting to press on 
our minds and affect their character, as if they 
retained with difficulty their shadows of ex- 
istence, and were continually on the point of 
vanishing into nothing? Why is this stupen- 
dous Power so unperceived and silent, while 
present, over all the scenes of the earth, and 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 57 

in all the paths and abodes of men ? Why 
does he keep his glory veiled behind the shades 
and visions of the material world? Why does 
not this latent glory sometimes beam forth 
with such a manifestation as could never be 
forgotten, nor could ever be remembered with- 
out an emotion of religious awe? And why, 
in contempt of all that he has displayed to 
excite either fear or love, is it still possible for 
a rational creature so to live, that it must finally 
come to an interview with him in a character 
completed by the full assemblage of those ac- 
quisitions, which have separately been dis- 
approved by him through every stage of the 
accumulation ? Why is it possible for feeble 
creatures to maintain their little dependent 
beings fortified and invincible in sin, amidst 
the presence of essential purity ? Why does 
not the apprehension of such a Being strike 
through the mind with such intense antipathy 
to evil, as to blast with death every active 
principle that is beginning to pervert it, and 
render gradual additions of depravity, growing 
into the solidity of habit, as impossible as for 
perishable materials to be raised into structures 
amidst the fires of the last day ? How is it 
possible to escape the solicitude, which should 
be inseparable from the knowledge that the 
beams of all-searching intelligence are con- 
tinually darting on us, and pervading us ; that 
we are exposed to the piercing inspection, 



58 ON a man's writing 

compared to which the concentrated attention 
of all the beings in the universe besides, would 
be but as the powerless gaze of an infant ? Why 
is faith, that faculty of spiritual apprehension, 
so absent, or so incomparably less perceptive 
of the grandest of its objects, than the senses 
are of theirs? While there is a Spirit in in- 
finite energy through the universe, why have 
the few particles of dust which enclose our 
spirits the power to intercept all sensible com- 
munication with him, and to place them as in a 
vacuity, where the sovereign Essence had been 
precluded or extinguished ? 

The reverential submission, with which you 
contemplate the mystery of omnipotent bene- 
volence forbearing to exert the agency, which 
could assume an instantaneous ascendency in 
every mind over the causes of depravation and 
ruin, will not avert your compassion from the 
unhappy persons who are practically "without 
God in the world." And if your intellect could 
be enlarged to a capacity for comprehending 
the whole measure and depth of disaster con- 
tained in this exclusion, (an exclusion under 
which a human being having the full and fear- 
ful truth of his situation revealed to him would 
behold, as relatively to his happiness, the whole 
resources of the creation sunk as into dust and 
ashes, and all the causes of joy and hope re- 
duced to insipidity and lost in despair,) you 
would feel a distressing emotion at each recital 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 59 

of a life in which religion had no share ; and 
you would be tempted to wish that some spirit 
from the other world, empowered with an 
eloquence that might threaten to alarm the 
slumbers of the dead, would throw himself in 
the way of this one mortal, and this one more, 
to protest, in sentences of lightning and thunder, 
against the infatuation that can at once acknow- 
ledge there is a God, and be content to forego 
every connexion with him, but that of danger. 
You would wish they should rather be assailed 
by the " terror of the Lord," in whatever were 
its most appalling form, than retain the satis- 
faction of carelessness till the day of his mercy 
be-past. 

But you will need no such enlargement of 
comprehension, in order to compassionate the 
situation of persons who, with reason sound to 
think, and hearts not strangers to feeling, have 
advanced far into life, perhaps near to its close, 
without having felt the influence of religion. 
If there is such a Being as we mean by the 
term God, the ordinary intelligence of a serious 
mind will be quite enough to see that it must 
be a melancholy thing to pass through life, and 
quit it, just as if there were not. And some- 
times it will appear as strange as it is melan- 
choly ; especially to a person who has been 
pious from his youth. He would be inclined 
to say, to a person who has nearly finished an 
irreligious life, What would have been justly 



60 ON a man's writing 

thought of you, if you could have been ha- 
bitually in the society of the wisest and best 
men on earth, and have acquired no degree 
of conformity ; much more, if you could all the 
while have acquired progressively the mean- 
ness, prejudices, follies, and vices, of the lowest 
society, with which you might have been at 
intervals thrown in unavoidable contact? You 
might have been asked how that was possible. 
But then through what fatality have you been 
able, during so many years spent in the pre- 
sence of a God, to continue even to this hour 
as clear of all signs of assimilation or impres- 
sion as if the Deity were but a poetical fiction, 
or an idol in some temple of Asia ? — Evidently, 
as the immediate cause, through want of thought 
concerning him. 

And why did you not think of him ? Did a 
most solemn thought of him never once pene- 
trate your soul, while admitting it true that 
there is such a Being ? If it never did, what 
is reason, what is mind, what is man ? If it 
did once, how could its effects stop there? 
How could a deep thought, on so transcendent 
a subject, fail to impose on the mind a 
permanent necessity of frequently recalling 
it ; as some awful or magnificent spectacle 
would haunt you with a long recurrence of 
its image, even were the spectacle itself seen 
no more ? 

Why did you not think of him ? How could 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 61 

you estimate so meanly your mind with all its 
capacities, as to feel no regret that an endless 
series of trifles should seize, and occupy as their 
right, all your thoughts, and deny them both the 
liberty and the ambition of going on to the 
greatest Object? How, while called to the con- 
templations which absorb the spirits of Heaven, 
could you be so patient of the task of counting 
the flies of a summer's day ? 

Why did you not think of him ? You knew 
yourself to be in the hands of some Being from 
whose power you could not be withdrawn ; was 
it not an equal defect of curiosity and prudence 
to indulge a careless confidence that sought no 
acquaintance with his nature, as regarded in 
itself and in its aspect on his creatures ; nor 
ever anxiously inquired what conduct should 
be observed toward him, and what expectations 
might be entertained from him? You would 
have been alarmed to have felt yourself in the 
power of a mysterious stranger, of your own 
feeble species ; but let the stranger be omni- 
potent, and you cared no more. 

Why did you not think of him ? One would 
deem that the thought of him must, to a 
serious mind, come second to almost every 
thought. The thought of virtue would suggest 
the thought of both a lawgiver and a rewarder ; 
the thought of crime, of an avenger ; the 
thought of sorrow, of a consoler ; the thought 
of an inscrutable mystery, of an intelligence 



62 ON a man's writing 

that understands it ; the thought of that ever- 
moving activity which prevails in the system of 
the universe, of a supreme agent ; the thought of 
the human family, of a great father ; the thought 
of all being not necessary and self-existent, of 
a creator ; the thought of life, of a preserver ; 
and the thought of death, of an uncontrollable 
disposer. By what dexterity, therefore, of irre- 
ligious caution, did you avoid precisely every 
track where the idea of him would have met 
you, or elude that idea if it came ? And what 
must sound reason pronounce of a mind which, 
in the train of millions of thoughts, has wan- 
dered to all things under the sun, to all the 
permanent objects or vanishing appearances in 
the creation, but never fixed its thought on the 
Supreme Reality ; never approached, like Moses, 
u to see this great sight ?" 

If it were a thing which we might be allowed 
to imagine, that the Divine Being were to ma- 
nifest himself in some striking manner to the 
senses, as by some resplendent appearance at 
the midnight hour, or by rekindling on an 
elevated mountain the long extinguished fires 
of Sinai, and uttering voices from those fires; 
would he not compel from you an attention 
which you now refuse ? Yes, you will say, he 
would then seize the mind with irresistible force, 
and religion would become its most absolute 
sentiment ; but he only presents himself to 
faith. Well, and is it a worthy reason for 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 63 

disregarding him, that you only believe him to 
be present and infinitely glorious? Is it the 
office of faith to veil, to frustrate, to annihilate 
in effect, its object ? Cannot you reflect, that 
the grandest representation of a spiritual and 
divine Being to the senses would bear not only 
no proportion to his glory, but no relation to 
his nature ; and could be adapted only to an 
inferior dispensation of religion, and to a people 
who, with the exception of a most extremely 
small number of men, had been totally untaught 
to carry their thoughts beyond the objects of 
sense ? Are you not aware, that such a repre- 
sentation would considerably tend to restrict 
you in your contemplation to a defined image, 
and therefore a most inadequate and subordi- 
nate idea of the divine Being? while the idea 
admitted by faith, though less immediately strik- 
ing, is capable of an illimitable expansion, by 
the addition of all that progressive thought can 
accumulate, under the continual certainty that 
all is still infinitely short of the reality. 

On the review of a character thus grown, in 
the exclusion of the religious influences, to the 
mature and perhaps ultimate state, the senti- 
ment of pious benevolence would be, — I regard 
you as an object of great compassion, unless 
there can be no felicity in friendship with the 
Almighty, unless there be no glory in being 
assimilated to his excellence, unless there be 
no eternal rewards for his devoted servants, 



64 ON a man's writing 

unless there be no danger in meeting him, at 
length, after a life estranged equally from his 
love and his fear. I deplore, at every period 
and crisis in the review of your life, that reli- 
gion was not there. If that had been there, 
your youthful animation would neither have 
been dissipated in the frivolity which, in the 
morning of the short day of life, fairly and 
formally sets aside all serious business for that 
day, nor would have sprung forward into the 
emulation of vice, or the bravery of profane- 
ness. If religion had been there, that one 
despicable companion, and that other malignant 
one, would not have seduced you into their 
society, or would not have retained you to 
share their degradation. And if religion had 
accompanied the subsequent progress of your 
life, it would have elevated you to rank, at 
this hour, with those saints who will soon 
be added to " the spirits of the just." Instead 
of which, what are you now, and what are your 
expectations as looking to that world, where 
piety alone can hope to find such a sequel of 
existence, as will inspire exultation in the re- 
trospect of this introductory life, in which the 
spirit took its impress for eternity from com- 
munication with God ? 

On the other hand, it would be interesting 
to record, or to hear, the history of a character 
which has received its form, and reached 
its maturity, under the strongest efficacy of 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 65 

religion. We do not know that there is a more 
beneficent or a more direct mode of the divine 
agency in any part of the creation than that 
which "apprehends" a man, as apostolic lan- 
guage expresses it, amidst the unthinking crowd, 
constrains him to serious reflection, subdues 
him under persuasive conviction, elevates him 
to devotion, and matures him in progressive 
virtue, in order to his passing finally to a 
nobler state of existence. When he has long 
been commanded by this influence, he will be 
happy to look back to its first operations, 
whether they were mingled in early life almost 
insensibly with his feelings, or came on him 
with mighty force at some particular time, and 
in connexion with some assignable and me- 
morable circumstance, which was apparently 
the instrumental cause. He will trace the pro- 
gress of this his better life, with grateful ac- 
knowledgment to the sacred power that has 
wrought him to a confirmation of religious 
habit which puts the final seal on his character. 
In the great majority of things, habit is a 
greater plague than- ever afflicted Egypt : in 
religious character, it is eminently a felicity. 
The devout man exults to feel that in aid of 
the simple force of the divine principles within 
him, there has grown by time an accessional 
power, which has almost taken place of his 
will, and holds a firm though quiet domination 
through the general action of his mind. He 

F 



66 ON a man's writing 

feels this confirmed habit as the grasp of the 
hand of God, which will never let him go. 
From this advanced state he looks with con- 
fidence on futurity, and says, I carry the in- 
delible mark upon me that I belong to God ; 
by being devoted to him I am free of the 
universe ; and I am ready to go to any world 
to which he shall please to transmit me, cer- 
tain that every where, in height or depth, he 
will acknowledge me for ever. 



LETTER VII. 

The preceding letters have attempted to 
exhibit only general views of the influences, 
by which a reflective man may perceive the 
moral condition of his mind to have been de- 
termined. 

In descending into more particular illustra- 
tions, there would have been no end of enume- 
rating the local circumstances, the relationships 
of life, the professions and employments, and 
the accidental events, which may have affected 
the character. A person who feels any in- 
terest, in reviewing what has formed thus far 
his education for futurity, may carry his own ex- 
amination into the most distinct particularity. — 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 67 

A few miscellaneous observations will conclude 
the essay. 

You will have observed that I have said 
comparatively little of that which forms the ex- 
terior, and in general account the main sub- 
stance, of the history of a man's life — the train 
of his fortunes and actions. If an adventurer 
or a soldier writes memoirs of himself for the 
information or amusement of the public, he 
may do well to keep his narrative alive by 
a constant crowded course of facts ; for the 
greater part of his readers will excuse him the 
trouble of investigating, and he might occa- 
sionally feel it a convenience to be excused 
from disclosing, if he had investigated, the his- 
tory and merits of his internal principles. Nor 
can this ingenuousness be any part of his 
duty, any more than it is that of an exhibiter 
in a public show, as long as he tells all that 
probably he professes to tell— where he has 
been, what he has witnessed, and the more 
reputable portion of what he has done. Let 
him go on with his lively anecdotes, or his 
legends of the marvellous, or his gazettes of 
marches, stratagems and skirmishes, and there 
is no obligation for him to turn either penitent 
or philosopher on our hands. — But I am sup- 
posing a man to retrace himself through his 
past life, in order to acquire a deep self-know- 
ledge, and to record the investigation for his 
own instruction. Through such a retrospective 

f 2 



68 ON a man's writing 

examination, the exterior life will hold but the 
second place in attention, as being the imper- 
fect offspring of that internal state, which it 
is the primary and more difficult object to re- 
view. From an effectual inquisition into this 
inner man, the investigator may proceed out- 
ward, to the course of his actions ; of which he 
will thus have become qualified to form a much 
juster estimate, than he could by any exercise 
of judgment upon them regarded merely as 
exterior facts. No doubt that sometimes also, 
in a contrary process, the judgment will be 
directed upon the dispositions and principles 
within by a consideration of the actions with- 
out, which will serve as a partial explication 
of the interior character. Still it is that in- 
terior character, whether displayed in actions 
or not, which forms the leading object of in- 
quiry. The chief circumstances of his practical 
life will, however, require to be noted, both for 
the purpose of so much illustration as they will 
afford of the state of his mind, and because they 
mark the points, and distinguish the stages, of 
his progress. 

Though in memoirs intended for publication, 
a large share of incident and action would 
generally be necessary, yet there are some men 
whose mental history alone might be very in- 
teresting to reflective readers ; as, for instance, 
that of a thinking man, remarkable for a num- 
ber of complete changes of his speculative 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 69 

system. From observing the usual tenacity of 
views once deliberately adopted in mature life, 
we regard as a curious phenomenon the man 
whose mind has been a kind of caravansera of 
opinions, entertained awhile, and then sent on 
pilgrimage ; a man who has admired and dis- 
missed systems with the same facility with which 
John Buncle found, adored, married, and in- 
terred, his succession of wives, each one being, 
for the time, not only better than all that went 
before, but the best in the world. You admire 
the versatile aptitude of a mind, sliding into 
successive forms of belief, in this intellectual 
metempsychosis by which it animates so many 
new bodies of doctrines in their turn. And as 
none of those dying pangs which hurt you in 
a tale of India, attend the desertion of each 
of these speculative forms which the soul has 
awhile inhabited, you are extremely amused by 
the number of transmigrations, and curious to see 
what is to be the next ; for you never reckon 
on the present state of such a man's views, as 
to be for permanence, unless perhaps when he 
has terminated his course of believing every 
thing, in ultimately believing nothing. Even 
then, unless he be very old, or feel more pride 
in being a sceptic, the conqueror of all systems, 
than he ever felt in being the champion of one, 
even then, it is very possible he may spring 
up again, like an igneous vapour from a bog, 
and glimmer through new mazes, or retrace 



70 ON a man's writing 

his course through half of those he went 
errant through before. You will observe, that 
no respect is attached to this Proteus of opinion, 
after his changes have been multiplied; as no 
party expect him to remain with them, or 
account him much of an acquisition if he 
should. One, or perhaps two, considerable 
changes, will be regarded as signs of a liberal 
inquirer, and therefore the party to which his 
first or his second intellectual conversion may 
assign him, will receive him gladly. But he 
will be deemed to have abdicated the dignity 
of reason, when it is found that he can adopt 
no principles but to betray them ; and it will 
be perhaps justly suspected that there is some- 
thing extremely infirm in the structure of that 
mind, whatever vigour may mark some of its 
operations, to which a series of very different 
and sometimes contrasted theories, can appear 
in succession demonstratively true, and which 
imitates sincerely the perverseness which Pe- 
truchio only affected, declaring that which was 
yesterday, to a certainty, the sun, to be to-day, 
as certainly, the moon. 

It would be curious to observe in a man who 
should make such an exhibition of the course 
of his mind, the sly deceit of self-love. While 
he despises the system which he has rejected, 
it must not imply so great a want of sense in 
him once to have embraced it, as in the rest, 
who were then or are now its adherents and 






MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 71 

advocates. No, in him it was no debility of 
intellect, it was at most but its immaturity or 
temporary lapse ; and probably he is prepared 
to explain to you that such peculiar circum- 
stances, as might warp a very strong and liberal 
mind, attended his consideration of the subject, 
and misled him to admit the belief of what 
others prove themselves fools by believing. 

Another thing apparent in a record of changed 
opinions would be, what I have noticed before, 
that there is scarcely any such thing in the 
world as simple conviction. It would be amu- 
sing to observe how the judgment had, in one 
instance, been overruled into acquiescence by 
the admiration of a celebrated name, or in 
another, into opposition by the envy of it ; 
how most opportunely judgment discovered the 
truth just at the time that interest could be 
essentially served by avowing it ; how easily 
the impartial examiner could be induced to 
adopt some part of another man's opinions, 
after that other had zealously approved some 
favourite, especially if unpopular part of his ; 
as the Pharisees almost became partial even 
to Christ, at the moment that he defended 
one of their doctrines against the Sadducees. 
It would be curious to see how a respectful 
estimate of a man's character and talents might 
be changed, in consequence of some personal 
inattention experienced from him, into depre- 
ciating invective against him or his intellectual 



72 ON a man's writing 

performances, and yet the railer, though ac- 
tuated solely by petty revenge, account himself, 
all the while, the model of equity and sound 
judgment.* It might be seen how the pa- 
tronage of power could elevate miserable pre- 
judices into revered wisdom, while poor old 
Experience was mocked with thanks for her 
instruction ; and how the vicinity and society of 
the rich, and as they are termed, great, could 
perhaps transmute a mind that seemed to be 
of the stern consistence of the early Roman 
republic, into the gentlest wax on which Cor- 
ruption could wish to imprint the venerable 
creed, " The right divine of kings to govern 
wrong," with the pious and loyal inference of 
the flagrant iniquity of expelling Tarquin. I 
am supposing the observer to perceive all these 
accommodating dexterities of reason ; for it 
were probably absurd to expect that any mind 
should itself be able, in its review, to detect all 
its own obliquities, after having been so long 
beguiled, like the mariners in a story which I 
remember to have read, who followed the di- 
rection of their compass, infallibly right as they 
could have no doubt, till they arrived at an 
enemy's port, where they were seized and made 
slaves. It happened that the wicked captain, 
in order to betray the ship, had concealed a 
large loadstone at a little distance on one side 
of the needle. 

* I remember several remarkable instances of this. 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 73 

On the notions and expectations of one stage 
of life, I suppose most reflecting men look back 
with a kind of compassionate contempt, though 
it may be often with a mingling wish that some 
of its enthusiasm of feeling could be recovered, 
I mean the period between childhood and 
maturity. They are prompted to exclaim, 
What fools we have been — while they recollect 
how sincerely they entertained and advanced 
the most ridiculous speculations on the in- 
terests of life, and the questions of truth ; how 
regretfully astonished they were to find the 
mature sense of some of those around them 
so completely wrong; yet in other instances 
what veneration they felt for authorities for 
which they have since lost all their respect; 
what a fantastic importance they attached to 
some most trivial things;* what complaints 
against their fate were uttered on account of 
disappointments which they have since recol- 
lected with gaiety or self-congratulation; what 
happiness of Elysium they expected from 
sources which would soon have failed to im- 
part even common satisfaction; and how sure 
they were that the feelings and opinions then 
predominant would continue through life. 

If a reflective aged man were to find at the 

* I recollect a youth of some acquirements, who earnestly- 
wished the time might one day arrive, when his name should 
he adorned with the addition of D.D., which he deemed one 
of the sublimest of human distinctions. 



74 ON A man's writing 

bottom of an old chest, where it had lain 
forgotten fifty years, a record which he had 
written of himself when he was young, simply 
and vividly describing his whole heart and 
pursuits, and reciting verbatim many recent 
passages of the language sincerely uttered to 
his favourite companions; would he not read 
it with more wonder than almost any other 
writing could at his age excite ? His con- 
sciousness would be strangely confused in the 
attempt to verify his identity with such a being. 
He would feel the young man, thus introduced 
to him, separated by so wide a distance as to 
render all congenial communion impossible. 
At every sentence, he might repeat, Foolish 
youth ! I have no sympathy with your feelings, 
I can hold no converse with your understanding. 
Thus you see that in the course of a long life 
a man may be several moral persons, so dis- 
similar, that if you could find a real individual 
that should nearly exemplify the character in 
one of these stages, and another that should 
exemplify it in the next, and so on to the 
last, and then bring these several persons to- 
gether into one company, which would thus 
be a representation of the successive states of 
one man, they would feel themselves a most 
heterogeneous party, would oppose and pro- 
bably despise one another, and soon separate, 
not caring if they were never to meet again. 
The dissimilarity in mind between the two 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 75 

extremes, the youth of seventeen and the sage 
of seventy, might perhaps be little less than 
that in countenance ; and as the one of these 
contrasts might be contemplated by an old 
man, if he had a true portrait for which he 
sat in the bloom of life, and should hold it be- 
side a mirror in which he looks at his present 
countenance, the other would be powerfully 
felt if he had such a genuine and detailed 
memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be 
worth while for a self-observant person in early 
life, to preserve, for the inspection of the old 
man, if he should live so long, such a mental 
likeness of the young one ? If it be not drawn 
near the time, it can never be drawn with 
sufficient accuracy.* 

If this sketch of life were not written till a 
very mature or an advanced period of it, a 
somewhat interesting point would be, to dis- 
tinguish the periods during which the mind 
made its greatest progress in the enlargement 
of its faculties, and the time when they appear 

* It is to be acknowledged that the above representation 
of the changes and the contrast is given in the strongest 
colouring it will admit. Many men, perhaps the majority, 
retain through life so much of the chief characteristic 
quality of the dispositions developed or acquired in youth, 
and of the order of notions then taken in, that they remain 
radically of the same character, notwithstanding very great 
modifications effected by time and events ; so that, in a 
general account of men, the mental difference between the 
two extremes of life may be less than the physical. 



76 

to have reached their insuperable limits. And 
if there have been vernal seasons, if I may so 
express it, of goodness also, periods separated 
off from the latter course of life by some point 
of time subsequent to which the christian 
virtues have had a less generous growth, this 
is a circumstance still more worthy to be 
strongly marked. No doubt it will be with a 
reluctant hand that a man marks either of these 
circumstances ; for he could not reflect, without 
regret, that many children have grown into 
maturity and great talent, and many unformed 
or defective characters into established excel- 
lence, since the period when he ceased to be- 
come abler or better. Pope, at the age of fifty, 
would have been incomparably more mortified 
than, as Johnson says, his readers are, at the 
fact, if he had perceived it, that he could not 
then write materially better than he had written 
at the age of twenty. — And the consciousness 
of having passed many years without any moral 
and religious progress, ought to be not merely 
the regret for an infelicity, but the remorse of 
guilt ; since, though natural causes must some- 
where have circumscribed and fixed the extent 
of the intellectual power, an advancement in the 
nobler distinctions has still continued to be 
possible, and will be possible till the evening of 
rational life. The instruction resulting from a 
clear estimate of what has been effected or not 
in this capital concern, is the chief advantage to 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 77 

be derived from recording the stages of life, 
comparing one part with another, and bringing 
the whole into a comparison with the standard 
of perfection, and the illustrious human ex- 
amples which have approached that standard 
the nearest. In forming this estimate, we shall 
keep in view the vast series of advantages and 
monitions, which has run parallel to the train 
of years ; and it will be inevitable to recollect, 
with severe mortification, the sanguine calcula- 
tions of improvement of the best kind, which at 
various periods the mind delighted itself in 
making for other given future periods, should 
life be protracted till then, and promised itself 
most certainly to realize by the time of their 
arrival. The mortification will be still more 
grievous, if there w r as at those past seasons 
something more hopeful than mere confident 
presumptions, if there were actual favourable 
omens, which partly justified while they raised, 
in ourselves and others, anticipations that have 
mournfully failed. My dear friend, it is very 
melancholy that evil must be so palpable, so 
hatefully conspicuous to an enlightened con- 
science, in every retrospect of a human life. 

If the supposed memoirs be to be carried 
forward as life advances, each period being re- 
corded as soon as it has elapsed, they should 
not be composed by small daily or weekly accu- 
mulations, (though this practice may have its 
use, in keeping a man observant of himself,) but 



78 ON a man's writing 

at certain considerable intervals, as at the end 
of each year, or any other measure of time that 
is ample enough for some definable alteration 
to have taken place in the character or attain- 
ments. 

It is needless to say that the style should be 
as simple as possible — unless indeed the writer 
accounts the theme worthy of being bedecked 
with brilliants and flowers. If he idolize his 
own image so much as to think it deserves to 
be enshrined in a frame or cabinet of gold, why, 
let him enshrine it. 

Should it be asked what degree of explicit- 
ness ought to prevail through this review, in 
reference to those particulars on which con- 
science has fixed the most condemning mark ; 
I answer, that if a man writes it exclusively for 
his own use, he ought to signify the quality and 
measure of the delinquency, so far explicitly, as 
to secure to his mind a defined recollection of 
the verdict pronounced by conscience before its 
emotions were quelled by time ; and so far as, 
in default of an adequate sentence then, to con- 
strain him to pronounce it now. Such honest 
distinctness is necessary, because this will be 
the most useful part of his record for reflection 
to dwell upon ; because this is the part which 
self-love is most willing to diminish and memory 
to dismiss ; because mere general terms or 
allusions of censure will but little aid the culti- 
vation of his humility ; and because this license 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 79 

of saying so much about himself in the character 
of a biographer may become only a temptation 
to the indulgence of vanity, and a protection 
from the shame of it, unless he can maintain 
the feeling in earnest that it is really at a con- 
fessional, a severe one, that he is giving his 
account. 

But perhaps he wishes to hold this record 
open to an intimate relation or friend ; perhaps 
even thinks it might supply some interest and 
some lessons to his children. And what then ? 
Why then it is perhaps too probable that though 
he could readily confess some of his faults, 
there may have been certain states of his mind,, 
and certain circumstances in his conduct, which 
he cannot persuade himself to present to such 
inspection. Such a difficulty of being quite in- 
genuous, when it is actually guilt, and not 
merely some propriety of discretion or good 
taste, that creates it, is in every instance a cause 
for deep regret. Should not a man tremble to 
feel himself not daring to confide to an equal 
and a mortal, what has been all observed by the 
Supreme Witness and Judge ? And the con- 
sideration of the large proportion of men con- 
stituting such instances, throws a melancholy 
hue over the general human character. It has 
several times, in writing this essay, occurred to 
me what strangers men may be to one another, 
whether as to the influences which have deter- 
mined their characters, or as to the less obvious 



80 ON a man's writing 

parts of their conduct. What strangers too we 
may be, with persons who have the art of con- 
cealment, to the principles which are at this 
moment prevailing in the heart. Each mind 
has an interior apartment of its own, into which 
none but itself and the Divinity can enter. In 
this secluded place, the passions mingle and 
fluctuate in unknown agitations. Here all the 
fantastic and all the tragic shapes of imagination 
have a haunt, where they can neither be invaded 
nor descried. Here the surrounding human 
beings, while quite insensible of it, are made 
the subjects of deliberate thought, and many of 
the designs respecting them revolved in silence. 
Here projects, convictions, vows, are confusedly 
scattered, and the records of past life are laid. 
Here in solitary state sits Conscience, surrounded 
by her own thunders, which sometimes sleep, 
and sometimes roar, while the world does not 
know. The secrets of this apartment, could 
they have been even but very partially brought 
forth, might have been fatal to that eulogy and 
splendour with which many a piece of biography 
has been exhibited by a partial and ignorant 
friend. If, in a man's own account of himself, 
written on the supposition of being seen by any 
other person, the substance of the secrets of this 
apartment be brought forth, he throws open the 
last asylum of his character, where it is well if 
there be nothing found that will distress and 
irritate his most partial friend, who may thus 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 81 

become the ally of his conscience to condemn, 
without the leniency which even conscience 
acquires from self-love. And if it be not 
brought forth, where is the integrity or value 
of the history, supposing it pretend to afford a 
full and faithful estimate ; and what ingenuous 
man could bear to give a delusive assurance of 
his being, or having been, so much more worthy 
of applause or affection than conscience all the 
while pronounces ? It is obvious then that a 
man whose sentiments and designs, or the un- 
disclosed parts of whose conduct, have been 
deeply criminal, must keep his record sacred to 
himself; unless he feels such an unsupportable 
longing to relieve his heart by confiding its 
painful consciousness, that he can be content 
to hold the regard of his friend on the strength 
of his penitence and recovered virtue. As to 
those, whose memory of the past is sullied by 
shades if not by stains, they must either in the 
same manner retain the delineation for solitary 
use, or limit themselves in writing it, to a de- 
liberate and strong expression of the measure of 
conscious culpabilities, and their effect in the 
general character, with a certain, not deceptive 
but partially reserved explanation, that shall 
equally avoid particularity and mystery ; or else 
they must consent to meet their friends, who 
share the human frailty and have had their 
deviations, on terms of mutual ingenuous ac- 
knowledgment. In this confidential communi- 

G 



82 ON a man's writing 

cation, each will learn to behold the other's 
transgressions fully as much in that light in 
which the}' certainly are infelicities to be com- 
miserated, as in that in which they are also 
faults or vices to be condemned; while both 
earnestly endeavour to improve by their remem- 
bered errors. 

But I shall find myself in danger of becoming 
ridiculous, amidst these scruples about an entire 
ingenuousness to a confidential friend or two, 
while I glance into the literary world, and 
observe the number of historians of their own 
lives, who magnanimously throw the complete 
cargo, both of their vanities and their vices, 
before the whole public. Men who can gaily 
laugh at themselves for ever having even pre- 
tended to goodness ; who can tell of having 
sought consolation for the sorrows of bereaved 
tenderness, in the recesses of debauchery; 
whose language betrays that they deem a 
spirited course of profligate adventures a much 
finer thing than the stupidity of vulgar virtues, 
and who seem to claim the sentiments with 
which we regard an unfortunate hero, for the 
disasters into which these adventures led them ; 
venal partisans whose talents would hardly have 
been bought, if their venom had not made up 
the deficiency ; profane travelling coxcombs ; 
players, and the makers of immoral plays — all 
can narrate the course of a contaminated life 
with the most ingenuous hardihood. Even 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 83 

courtezans, grieved at the excess of modesty 
with which the age is afflicted, have endeavoured 
to diminish the evil, by presenting themselves 
before the public in their narratives, in a man- 
ner very analogous to that in which the Lady 
Godiva is said to have consented, from a most 
generous inducement, to pass through the city 
of Coventry. They can gravely relate, perhaps 
with intermingled paragraphs and verses of 
plaintive sensibility, (a kind of weeds in which 
sentiment without principle apes and mocks 
mourning virtue,) the whole nauseous detail of 
their transitions from proprietor to proprietor. 
They can tell of the precautions for meeting 
some " illustrious personage," accomplished in 
depravity even in his early youth, with the 
proper adjustment of time and circumstances to 
save him the scandal of such a meeting; the 
hour when they crossed the river in a boat ; the 
arrangements about money; the kindness of 
the " personage" at one time, his contemptuous 
neglect at another ; and every thing else that 
can turn the compassion with which we deplore 
their first misfortunes and errors, into detesta- 
tion of the effrontery which can take to itself 
a merit in proclaiming the commencement, sequel 
and all, to the wide world. 

With regard to all the classes of self-descri- 
bers who thus think the publication of their 
vices necessary to crown their fame, one should 
wish there were some public special mark and 

g2 



84 ON A man's writing 

brand of emphatic reprobation, to reward this 
tribute to public morals. Men that court the 
pillory for the pleasure of it, ought to receive 
the honour of it too, in all those contumelious 
salutations which suit the merits of vice grown 
proud of its impudence. They who " glory 
in their shame" should, like other distinguished 
personages, " pay a tax for being eminent." 
Yet I own the public itself is to be consulted 
in this case ; for if the public welcomes such 
productions, it shows there are readers who feel 
themselves a-kin to the writers, and it would be 
hard to deprive congenial souls of the luxury of 
their appropriate sympathies. If such is the 
taste, it proves that a considerable portion of 
the public deserves just that kind of respect for 
its virtue, which is very significantly implied in 
this confidence of its favour. 

One is indignant at the cant pretence and 
title of Confessions, sometimes adopted by these 
exhibiters of their own disgrace ; as if it were 
to be believed, that penitence and humiliation 
would ever excite men to call thousands to 
witness a needless disclosure of what oppresses 
them with grief and shame. If they would be 
mortified that only a few readers should think 
it worth while to see them thus performing the 
work of self-degradation, like the fetid heroes 
of the Dunciad in a ditch, would it be because 
they are desirous that the greatest possible 
number should have the benefit of being averted 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 85 

from vice through disgust and contempt of them 
as its example ? No, this title of Confessions is 
only a nominal deference to morality, necessary 
indeed to be paid, because mankind never forget 
to insist, that the name of virtue shall be re- 
spected, even while vice obtains from them 
that practical favour on which these writers 
place their reliance for toleration or applause. 
This slight homage being duly rendered and 
occasionally repeated, they trust in the character 
of the community that they shall not meet the 
kind of condemnation, and they have no desire 
for the kind of pity, which would strictly be- 
long to criminals ; nor is it any part or effect 
of their penitence, to wish that society may be 
made better by seeing in them how odious are 
folly and vice. They are glad the age continues 
such, that even they may have claims to be 
praised; and honour of some kind, and from 
some quarter, is the object to which they aspire, 
and the consequence which they promise them- 
selves. Let them once be convinced, that they 
make such exhibitions under the absolute condi- 
tion of subjecting themselves irredeemably to op- 
probrium, as in Miletus the persons infected with 
a rage for destroying themselves were by a solemn 
decree assured of being exposed in naked igno- 
miny after the perpetration of the deed — and 
these literary suicides will be heard of no more. 
Rousseau has given a memorable example of 
this voluntary humiliation. And he has very 



86 ON a man's writing 

honestly assigned the degree of contrition which 
accompanied the self-inflicted penance, in the 
declaration that this document with all its 
dishonours, shall be presented in his justification 
before the Eternal Judge. If we could, in any 
case, pardon the kind of ingenuousness which he 
has displayed, it would certainly be in the dis- 
closure of a mind so wonderfully singular as 
his.* We are almost willing to have such a 

* There is indeed one case in which this kind of honesty- 
would be so signally useful to mankind, that it would deserve 
almost to be canonized into a virtue. If statesmen, including 
monarchs, courtiers, ministers, senators, popular leaders, 
ambassadors, &c, would publish, before they go in the 
triumph of virtue, to the "last audit," or leave to be pub- 
lished after they are gone, each a frank exposition of 
motives, intrigues, cabals, and manoeuvres, the worship 
which mankind have rendered to power and rank would 
cease to be, what it has always been, a mere blind supersti- 
tion, when such rational grounds should come to be shown 
for the homage. It might contribute to a happy exorcism of 
that spirit which has never suffered nations to be at peace ; 
while it would give an altered and less delusive character to 
history. Great service in this way, but unfortunately late, 
is in the course of being rendered in our times, by the 
publication of private memoirs, written by persons connected 
or acquainted with those of the highest order. Let any one 
look at the exhibition of the very centre of the dignity and 
power of a great nation, as given in Pepys's Memoirs, 
though with the omission in that publication, as I am in- 
formed on the best authority, of sundry passages contained 
in the manuscript, of such a colour that their production 
would have exceeded the very utmost license allowable by 
public decorum. I need not revert to works now com- 
paratively ancient, such as Lord Melbourn's Diary. 



MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 87 

being preserved to all the unsightly minutiae 
and anomalies of its form, to be placed, as an 
unique in the moral museum of the world. 

Rousseau's impious reference to the Divine 
Judge, leads me to suggest, as I conclude, the 
consideration, that the history of each man's 
life, though it should not be written by him- 
self or by any mortal hand, is thus far unerringly 
recorded, will one day be finished in truth, and 
one other day yet to come, will be brought to 
a final estimate. A mind accustomed to grave 
reflections is sometimes led involuntarily into a 
curiosity of awful conjecture, which asks, What 
are those words which I should read this night, 
if, as to Belshazzar, a hand of prophetic shade 
were sent to write before me the identical 
expression, or the momentous import, of the 
sentence in which that final estimate will be 
declared ? 



ESSAY II 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 



LETTER I. 

MY DEAR FRIEND, 

We have several times talked of this bold 
quality, and acknowledged its great importance. 
Without it, a human being, with powers at 
best but feeble and surrounded by innumerable 
things tending to perplex, to divert, and to 
frustrate, their operations, is indeed a pitiable 
atom, the sport of diverse and casual impulses. 
It is a poor and disgraceful thing, not to be able 
to reply, with some degree of certainty, to the 
simple questions, What will you be ? What will 
you do ? 

A little acquaintance with mankind will sup- 
ply numberless illustrations of the importance 
of this qualification. You will often see a 
person anxiously hesitating a long time between 
different, or opposite determinations, though im- 
patient of the pain of such a state, and ashamed 
of the debility. A faint impulse of preference 
alternates toward the one, and toward the 



90 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

other ; and the mind, while thus held in a 
trembling balance, is vexed that it cannot get 
some new thought, or feeling, or motive ; that 
it has not more sense, more resolution, more 
of any thing that would save it from envying 
even the decisive instinct of brutes. It wishes 
that any circumstance might happen, or any 
person might appear, that could deliver it from 
the miserable suspense. 

In many instances, when a determination is 
adopted, it is frustrated by this temperament. 
A man, for example, resolves on a journey 
to-morrow, which he is not under an absolute 
necessity to undertake, but the inducements 
appear, this evening, so strong, that he does not 
think it possible he can hesitate in the morning. 
In the morning, however, these inducements 
have unaccountably lost much of their force. 
Like the sun that is rising at the same time, 
they appear dim through a mist; and the sky 
lowers, or he fancies that it does, and almost 
wishes to see darker clouds than there actually 
are ; recollections of toils and fatigues ill repaid 
in past expeditions rise and pass into anticipa- 
tion ; and he lingers, uncertain, till an advanced 
hour determines the question for him, by the 
certainty that it is now too late to go. 

Perhaps a man has conclusive reasons for 
wishing to remove to another place of residence. 
But when he is going to take the first actual 
step towards executing his purpose, he is met 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 91 

by a new train of ideas, presenting the possible, 
and magnifying the unquestionable, disadvan- 
tages and uncertainties of a new situation; 
awakening the natural reluctance to quit a 
place to which habit has accommodated his 
feelings, and which has grown warm to him, if 
I may so express it, by his having been in it so 
long ; giving a new impulse to his affection for 
the friends whom he must leave ; and so 
detaining him still lingering, long after his 
judgment may have dictated to him to be 
gone. 

A man may think of some desirable alteration 
in his plan of life ; perhaps in the arrangements 
of his family, or in the mode of his intercourse 
with society, — Would it be a good thing ? He 
thinks it would be a good thing. It certainly 
would be a very good thing. He wishes it were 
done. He will attempt it almost immediately. 
The following day, he doubts whether it would 
be quite prudent. Many things are to be con- 
sidered. May there not be in the change some 
evil of which he is not aware ? Is this a 
proper time ? What will people say ? — And 
thus, though he does not formally renounce his 
purpose, he shrinks out of it, with an irksome 
wish that he could be fully satisfied of the pro- 
priety of renouncing it. Perhaps he wishes that 
the thought had never occurred to him, since it 
has diminished his self-complacency, without 
promoting his virtue. But next week, his 



92 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

conviction of the wisdom and advantage of such 
a reform comes again with great force. Then, 
Is it so practicable as I was at first willing to 
imagine ? Why not ? Other men have done 
much greater things ; a resolute mind may 
brave and accomplish every thing ; difficulty is 
a stimulus and a triumph to a strong spirit; 
" the joys of conquest are the joys of man." 
What need I care for people's opinion ? It shall 
be done. — He makes the first attempt. But 
some unexpected obstacle presents itself; he 
feels the awkwardness of attempting an unac- 
customed manner of acting; the questions or 
the ridicule of his friends disconcert him ; his 
ardour abates and expires. He again begins to 
question, whether it be wise, whether it be 
necessary, whether it be possible ; and at last 
surrenders his purpose to be perhaps resumed 
when the same feelings return, and to be in the 
same manner again relinquished. 

While animated by some magnanimous sen- 
timents which he has heard or read, or while 
musing on some great example, a man may 
conceive the design, and partly sketch the plan, 
of a generous enterprise ; and his imagination 
revels in the felicity, to others and himself, that 
would follow from its accomplishment. The 
splendid representation always centres in him- 
self as the hero who is to realize it. 

In a moment of remitted excitement, a faint 
whisper from within may doubtfully ask, Is this 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 93 

more than a dream ; or am I really destined to 
achieve such an enterprise ? Destined ! — and 
why are not this conviction of its excellence, this 
conscious duty of performing the noblest things 
that are possible, and this passionate ardour, 
enough to constitute a destiny ? — He feels indig- 
nant that there should be a failing part of his 
nature to defraud the nobler, and cast him below 
the ideal model and the actual examples which 
he is admiring ; and this feeling assists him to 
resolve, that he will undertake this enterprise, 
that he certainly will, though the Alps or the 
Ocean lie between him and the object. Again 
his ardour slackens ; distrustful of himself, he 
wishes to know how the design would appear to 
other minds ; and when he speaks of it to his 
associates, one of them wonders, another laughs, 
and another frowns. His pride, while with 
them, attempts a manful defence ; but his re- 
solution gradually crumbles down toward their 
level ; he becomes in a little while ashamed to 
entertain a visionary project, which therefore, 
like a rejected friend, desists from intruding on 
him or following him, except at lingering dis- 
tance ; and he subsides, at last, into what he 
labours to believe a man too rational for the 
schemes of ill-calculating enthusiasm. And it 
were strange if the effort to make out this 
favourable estimate of himself did not succeed, 
while it is so much more pleasant to attribute 
one's defect of enterprise to wisdom, which on 



94 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

maturer thought disapproves it, than to imbe- 
cility, which shrinks from it. 

A person of undecisive character wonders 
how all the embarrassments in the world 
happened to meet exactly in his way, to place 
him just in that one situation for which he is 
peculiarly unadapted, but in which he is also 
willing to think no other man could have acted 
with facility or confidence. Incapable of setting 
up a firm purpose on the basis of things as they 
are, he is often employed in vain speculations 
on some different supposable state of things, 
which would have saved him from all this per- 
plexity and irresolution. He thinks what a 
determined course he could have pursued, if his 
talents, his health, his age, had been different ; 
if he had been acquainted with some one 
person sooner ; if his friends were, in this or the 
other point, different from what they are ; or 
if fortune had showered her favours on him. 
And he gives himself as much license to com- 
plain, as if all these advantages had been among 
the rights of his nativity, but refused, by a 
malignant or capricious fate, to his life. Thus 
he is occupied — instead of marking with a 
vigilant eye, and seizing with a strong hand, all 
the possibilities of his actual situation. 

A man without decision can never be said to 
belong to himself; since, if he dared to assert 
that he did, the puny force of some cause, about 
as powerful, you would have supposed,* as a 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 95 

spider, may make a seizure of the hapless boaster 
the very next moment, and contemptuously ex- 
hibit the futility of the determinations by which 
he was to have proved the independence of his 
understanding and his will. He belongs to what- 
ever can make capture of him ; and one thing 
after another vindicates its right to him, by 
arresting him while he is trying to go on ; as 
twigs and chips, floating near the edge of a 
river, are intercepted by every weed, and 
whirled in every little eddy. Having concluded 
on a design, he may pledge himself to accom- 
plish it, — if the hundred diversities of feeling 
which may come within the week, will let him. 
His character precluding all foresight of his 
conduct, he may sit and wonder what form 
and direction his views and actions are destined 
to take to-morrow; as a farmer has often to 
acknowledge that next day's proceedings are 
at the disposal of its winds and clouds. 

This man's notions and determinations always 
depend very much on other human beings ; 
and what chance for consistency and stability, 
while the persons with whom he may converse, 
or transact, are so various ? This very evening, 
he may talk with a man whose sentiments will 
melt away the present form and outline of his 
purposes, however firm and defined he may 
have fancied them to be. A succession of 
persons whose faculties were stronger than his 
own, might, in spite of his irresolute re-action, 



96 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

take him and dispose of him as they pleased. 
Such infirmity of spirit practically confesses 
him made for subjection, and he passes, like a 
slave, from owner to owner. Sometimes in- 
deed it happens, that a person so constituted 
falls into the train, and under the permanent 
ascendency, of some one stronger mind, which 
thus becomes through life the oracle and guide, 
and gives the inferior a steady will and plan. 
This, when the governing spirit is wise and 
virtuous, is a fortunate relief to the feeling, 
and an advantage gained to the utility, 
of the subordinate, and as it were, appended 
mind. 

The regulation of every man's plan must 
greatly depend on the course of events, which 
come in an order not to be foreseen or prevent- 
ed. But in accommodating the plans of conduct 
to the train of events, the difference between 
two men may be no less than that, in the one 
instance, the man is subservient to the events, 
and in the other, the events are made sub- 
servient to the man. Some men seem to have 
been taken along by a succession of events, 
and, as it were, handed forward in helpless 
passiveness from one to another ; having no 
determined principle in their own characters, 
by which they could constrain those events to 
serve a design formed antecedently to them, 
or apparently in defiance of them. The events 
seized them as a neutral material, not they 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. \) I 

the events. Others, advancing through life 
with an internal invincible determination, have 
seemed to make the train of circumstances, 
whatever they were, conduce as much to their 
chief design as if they had, by some directing 
interposition, been brought about on purpose. 
It is wonderful how even the casualties of life 
seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to 
them, and yield to subserve a design which 
they may, in their first apparent tendency, 
threaten to frustrate. 

You may have known such examples, though 
they are comparatively not numerous. You 
may have seen a man of this vigorous character 
in a state of indecision concerning some affair 
in which it was necessary for him to determine, 
because it was necessary for him to act. But 
in this case, his manner would assure you 
that he would not remain long undecided ; you 
would wonder if you found him still balancing 
and hesitating the next day. If he explained 
his thoughts, you would perceive that their 
clear process, evidently at each effort gaining 
something toward the result, must certainly 
reach it ere long. The deliberation of such 
a mind is a very different thing from the 
fluctuation of one whose second thinking only 
upsets the first, and whose third confounds 
both. To know how to obtain a determination, 
is one of the first requisites and indications 
of a rationally decisive character. 

H 



98 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

When the decision was arrived at, and a 
plan of action approved, you would feel an 
assurance that something would absolutely be 
done. It is characteristic of such a mind, to 
think for effect ; and the pleasure of escaping 
from temporary doubt gives an additional im- 
pulse to the force with which it is carried 
into action. The man will not re-examine his 
conclusions with endless repetition, and he 
will not be delayed long by consulting other 
persons, after he had ceased to consult himself. 
He cannot bear to sit still among unexecuted 
decisions and unattempted projects. We wait 
to hear of his achievements, and are confident 
we shall not wait long. The possibility or the 
means may not be obvious to us, but we know 
that every thing will be attempted, and that 
a spirit of such determined will is like a river, 
which, in whatever manner it is obstructed, 
will make its way somewhere. It must have 
cost Caesar many anxious hours of deliberation, 
before he decided to pass the Rubicon ; but 
it is probable he suffered but few to elapse 
between the decision and the execution. And 
any one of his friends, who should have been 
apprised of his determination, and understood 
his character, would have smiled contemp- 
tuously to hear it insinuated that though Caesar 
had resolved, Caesar would not dare ; or that 
though he might cross the Rubicon, whose 
opposite bank presented to him no hostile 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 99 

legions, he might come to other rivers, which 
he would not cross ; or that either rivers, or 
any other obstacle, would deter him from pro- 
secuting his determination from this ominous 
commencement to its very last consequence. 

One signal advantage possessed by a mind 
of this character is, that its passions are not 
wasted. The whole measure of passion of 
which any one, with important transactions 
before him, is capable, is not more than enough 
to supply interest and energy for the required 
practical exertions ; and therefore as little as 
possible of this costly flame should be ex- 
pended in a way that does not augment the 
force of action. But nothing can less con- 
tribute or be more destructive to vigour of 
action, than protracted anxious fluctuation, 
through resolutions adopted, rejected, resumed, 
suspended ; while yet nothing causes a greater 
expense of feeling. The heart is fretted and 
exhausted by being subjected to an alternation 
of contrary excitements, with the ultimate 
mortifying consciousness of their contributing 
to no end. The long-wavering deliberation, 
whether to perform some bold action of difficult 
virtue, has often cost more -to feeling than the 
action itself, or a series of such actions, would 
have cost ; with the great disadvantage too of 
not being relieved by any of that invigoration 
which the man in action finds in the activity 
itself, that spirit created to renovate the energy 

h 2 



100 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

which the action is expending. When the 
passions are not consumed among dubious 
musings and abortive resolutions, their utmost 
value and use can be secured by throwing all 
their animating force into effective operation. 
J Another advantage of this character, is, that 
it exempts from a great deal of interference 
and obstructive annoyance, which an irresolute 
man may be almost sure to encounter. Weak- 
ness, in every form, tempts arrogance ; and a 
man may be allowed to wish for a kind of 
character with which stupidity and impertinence 
may not make so free. When a firm decisive 
spirit is recognised, it is curious to see how 
the space clears around a man, and leaves him 
room and freedom. The disposition to in- 
terrogate, dictate, or banter, preserves a re- 
spectful and politic distance, judging it not 
unwise to keep the peace with a person of 
so much energy. A conviction that he un- 
derstands and that he wills with extraordinary 
force, silences the conceit that intended to 
perplex or instruct him, and intimidates the 
malice that was disposed to attack him. There 
is a feeling, as in respect to Fate, that the 
decrees of so inflexible a spirit must be right, 
or that, at least, they xvill be accomplished. 

But not only will he secure the freedom 
of acting for himself, he will obtain also by 
degrees the coincidence of those in whose 
company he is to transact the business of 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 101 

life. If the manners of such a man be free 
from arrogance, and he can qualify his firm- 
ness with a moderate degree of insinuation ; 
and if his measures have partly lost the ap- 
pearance of being the dictates of his will, 
under the wider and softer sanction of some 
experience that they are reasonable ; both 
competition and fear will be laid to sleep, 
and his will may acquire an unresisted as- 
cendency over many who will be pleased to 
fall into the mechanism of a system, which 
they find makes them more successful and 
happy than they could have been amidst the 
anxiety of adjusting plans and expedients of 
their own, and the consequences of often ad- 
justing them ill. I have known several parents, 
both fathers and mothers, whose management 
of their families has answered this description ; 
and has displayed a striking example of the 
facile complacency with which a number of 
persons, of different ages and dispositions, will 
yield to the decisions of a firm mind, acting 
on an equitable and enlightened system. 

The last resource of this character, is, hard 
inflexible pertinacity, on which it may be 
allowed to rest its strength after finding it 
can be effectual in none of its milder forms. 
I remember admiring an instance of this kind, 
in a firm, sagacious and estimable old man, 
whom I well knew, and who has long been 
dead. Being on a jury, in a trial of life and 



102 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

death, he was satisfied of the innocence of 
the prisoner ; the other eleven were of the 
opposite opinion. But he was resolved the 
man should not be condemned ; and as the 
first effort for preventing it, very properly 
made application to the minds of his asso- 
ciates, spending several hours in labouring 
to convince them. But he found he made 
no impression, while he was exhausting the 
strength which it was necessary to reserve for 
another mode of operation. He then calmly 
told them that it should now be a trial who 
could endure confinement and famine the 
longest, and that they might be quite assured 
he would sooner die than release them at the 
expense of the prisoner's life. In this situation 
they spent about twenty-four hours ; when 
at length all acceded to his verdict of ac- 
quittal. 

It is not necessary to amplify on the in- 
dispensable importance of this quality, in order 
to the accomplishment of any thing eminently 
good. We instantly see, that every path to 
signal excellence is so obstructed and beset, 
that none but a spirit so qualified can pass. 
But it is time to examine what are the ele- 
ments of that mental constitution which is 
displayed in the character in question. 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 103 



LETTER II. 



Perhaps the best mode would be, to bring 
into our thoughts, in succession, the most re- 
markable examples of this character that we 
have known in real life, or that we have read 
of in history or even in fiction ; and atten- 
tively to observe, in their conversations, man- 
ners, and actions, what principles appear to 
produce, or to constitute, this commanding dis- 
tinction. You will easily pursue this investiga- 
tion yourself. I lately made a partial attempt, 
and shall offer you a number of suggestions. 

As a previous observation, it is beyond all 
doubt that very much depends on the con- 
stitution of the body. It would be for phy- 
siologists to explain, if it were explicable, the 
manner in which corporeal organization affects 
the mind; I only assume it as a fact, that 
there is in the material construction of some 
persons, much more than of others, some 
quality which augments, if it do not create, 
both the stability of their resolution, and the 
energy of their active tendencies. There is 
something that, like the ligatures which one 
class of the Olympic combatants bound on 



104 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

their hands and wrists, braces round, if I may 
so describe it, and compresses the powers of 
the mind, giving them a steady forcible spring 
and re-action, which they would presently lose 
if they could be transferred into a constitution 
of soft, yielding, treacherous debility. The 
action of strong character seems to demand 
something firm in its material basis, as mas- 
sive engines require, for their weight and for 
their working, to be fixed on a solid founda- 
tion. Accordingly I believe it would be found, 
that a majority of the persons most remark- 
able for decisive character, have possessed great 
constitutional physical firmness. I do not mean 
an exemption from disease and pain, nor any 
certain measure of mechanical strength, but 
a tone of vigour, the opposite to lassitude, and 
adapted to great exertion and endurance. This 
is clearly evinced in rpspect to many of them, 
by the prodigious labours and deprivations 
which they have borne in prosecuting their 
designs. The physical nature has seemed a 
proud ally of the moral one, and with a hard- 
ness that would never shrink, has sustained 
the energy that could never remit. 

A view of the disparities between the dif- 
ferent races of animals inferior to man, will 
show the effect of organization on disposition. 
Compare, for instance, a lion with the com- 
mon beasts of our fields, many of them larger 
in bulk of animated substance. What a vast 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 105 

superiority of courage, and impetuous and de- 
termined action ; which difference we attribute 
to some great dissimilarity of modification in 
the composition of the animated material. Now 
it is probable that a difference somewhat analo- 
gous subsists between some human beings 
and others in point of what we may call mere 
physical constitution ; and that this is no small 
part of the cause of the striking inequalities 
in respect to decisive character. A man who 
excels in the power of decision has probably 
more of the physical quality of a lion in his com- 
position than other men. 

It is observable that women in general have 
less inflexibility of character than men ; and 
though many moral influences contribute to this 
difference, the principal cause may probably 
be something less firm in the corporeal con- 
stitution. Now that physical quality, whatever 
it is, from the smaller measure of which in the 
constitution of the frame, women have less 
firmness than men, may be possessed by one 
man more than by men in general in a greater 
degree of difference than that by which men in 
general exceed women. 

If there have been found some resolute 
spirits powerfully asserting themselves in feeble 
vehicles, it is so much the better ; since this 
would authorize a hope, that if all the other 
grand requisites can be combined, they may 
form a strong character, in spite of an un- 



106 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

adapted consitution. And on the other hand, 
no constitutional hardness will form the true 
character, without those superior properties ; 
though it may produce that false and con- 
temptible kind of decision which we term 
obstinacy ; a stubbornness of temper, which 
can assign no reasons but mere will, for a 
constancy which acts in the nature of dead 
weight rather than of strength ; resembling 
less the reaction of a powerful spring than the 
gravitation of a big stone. 

The first prominent mental characteristic of 
the person whom I describe, is, a complete 
confidence in his own judgment. It will per- 
haps be said, that this is not so uncommon 
a qualification. I however think it is uncom- 
mon. It is indeed obvious enough, that almost 
all men have a flattering estimate of their own 
understanding, and that as long as this un- 
derstanding has no harder task than to form 
opinions which are not to be tried in action, 
they have a most self-complacent assurance of 
being right. This assurance extends to the 
judgments which they pass on the proceedings 
of others. But let them be brought into the 
necessity of adopting actual measures in an 
untried situation, where, unassisted by any pre- 
vious example or practice, they are reduced 
to depend on the bare resources of judgment 
alone, and you will see in many cases, this 
confidence of opinion vanish away. The mind 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 107 

seems all at once placed in a misty vacuity, 
where it reaches round on all sides, but can 
find nothing to take hold of. Or if not lost 
in vacuity, it is overwhelmed in confusion ; and 
feels as if its faculties were annihilated in the 
attempt to think of schemes and calculations 
among the possibilities, chances, and hazards, 
which overspread a wide untrodden field ; and 
this conscious imbecility becomes severe dis- 
tress, when it is believed that consequences, 
of serious or unknown good or evil, are de- 
pending on the decisions which are to be 
formed amidst so much uncertainty. The 
thought painfully recurs at each step and turn, 
I may by chance be right, but it is fully as 
probable I am wrong. It is like the case of 
a rustic walking in London, who, having no 
certain direction through the vast confusion of 
streets to the place where he wishes to be, 
advances, and hesitates, and turns, and inquires, 
and becomes, at each corner, still more inex- 
tricably perplexed.* A man in this situation 
feels he shall be very unfortunate if he cannot 
accomplish more than he can understand. — Is not 
this frequently, when brought to the practical 

* "Why does not the man call a hackney-coach?" a gay 
reader, I am aware, will say of the person so bemazed in the 
great town. So he might, certainly ; (that is, if he know 
where to find one ;) and the gay reader and I have only to 
deplore that there is no parallel convenience for the assistance 
of perplexed understandings. 



108 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

test, the state of a mind not disposed in general 
to undervalue its own judgment? 

In cases where judgment is not so completely 
bewildered, you will yet perceive a great prac- 
tical distrust of it. A man has perhaps ad- 
vanced a considerable way towards a decision, 
but then lingers at a small distance from it, 
till necessity, with a stronger hand than con- 
viction, impels him upon it. He cannot see 
the whole length of the question, and suspects 
the part beyond his sight to be the most im- 
portant, for the most essential point and stress 
of it may be there. He fears that certain 
possible consequences, if they should follow, 
would cause him to reproach himself for his 
present determination. He wonders how this 
or the other person would have acted in the 
same circumstances ; eagerly catches at any 
thing like a respectable precedent ; would be 
perfectly willing to forego the pride of setting 
an example, for the safety of following one ; 
and looks anxiously round to know what each 
person may think on the subject; while the 
various and opposite opinions to which he 
listens, perhaps only serve to confound his 
perception of the track of thought by which 
he had hoped to reach his conclusion. Even 
when that conclusion is obtained, there are 
not many minds that might not be brought 
a few degrees back into dubious hesitation, 
by a man of respected understanding saying, 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 109 

in a confident tone, Your plan is injudicious ; 
your selection is unfortunate ; the event will 
disappoint you. 

It cannot be supposed that I am maintaining 
such an absurdity as that a man's complete 
reliance on his own judgment is a proof of its 
strength and rectitude. Intense stupidity may be 
in this point the rival of clear-sighted wisdom. 
I had once some knowledge of a person, whom 
no mortal could have surpassed, not Cromwell 
or Strafford, in confidence in his own judgment 
and consequent inflexibility of conduct ; while 
at the same time his successive schemes were 
ill-judged to a degree that made his disappoint- 
ments ridiculous still more than pitiable. He 
was not an example of that simple obstinacy 
which I have mentioned before ; for he con- 
sidered his measures, and did not want for 
reasons which seriously satisfied himself of 
their being most judicious. This confidence of 
opinion may be possessed by a person in whom 
it will be contemptible or mischievous ; but its 
proper place is in a very different character, and 
without it there can be no dignified actors in 
human affairs. 

If, after it is seen how foolish this confidence 
appears as a feature in a weak character, it be 
inquired what, in a rightfully decisive person's 
manner of thinking, it is that authorizes him 
in this firm assurance that his view of the con- 
cerns before him is comprehensive and accurate ; 



110 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

he may, in answer, justify his confidence on 
such grounds as these : that he is conscious 
that objects are presented to his mind with an 
exceedingly distinct and perspicuous aspect, 
not like the shapes of moon-light, or like Ossian's 
ghosts, dim forms of uncircumscribed shade ; 
that he sees the different parts of the subject 
in an arranged order, not in unconnected 
fragments; that in each deliberation the main 
object keeps its clear pre-eminence, and he 
perceives the bearings which the subordinate 
and conducive ones have on it ; that perhaps 
several trains of thought, drawn from different 
points, lead him to the same conclusion ; and 
that he finds his judgment does not vary in 
servility to the moods of his feelings. 

It may be presumed that a high degree of this 
character is not attained without a considerable 
measure of that kind of certainty, with respect 
to the relations of things, which can be acquired 
only from experience and observation. A very 
protracted course of time, however, may not be 
indispensable for this discipline. An extreme 
vigilance in the exercise of observation, and a 
strong and strongly exerted power of general- 
izing on experience, may have made a compa- 
ratively short time enough to supply a large 
share of the wisdom derivable from these 
sources ; so that a man may long before he is 
old be rich in the benefits of experience, and 
therefore may have all the decision of judgment 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. Ill 

legitimately founded on that accomplishment. 
This knowledge from experience he will be able 
to apply in a direct and immediate manner, and 
without refining it into general principles, to 
some situations of affairs, so as to anticipate the 
consequences of certain actions in those situ- 
ations by as plain a reason, and as confidently, 
as the kind of fruit to be produced by a given 
kind of tree. Thus far the facts of his ex- 
perience will serve him as precedents ; cases of 
such near resemblance to those in which he is 
now to act as to afford him a rule by the most 
immediate inference. At the next step, he will 
be able to apply this knowledge, now converted 
into general principles, to a multitude of cases 
bearing but a partial resemblance to any thing 
he has actually witnessed. And then, in look- 
ing forward to the possible occurrence of alto- 
gether new combinations of circumstances, he 
can trust to the resources which he is persuaded 
his intellect will open to him, or is humbly con- 
fident, if he be a devout man, that the Supreme 
Intelligence will not suffer to be wanting to 
him, when the occasion arrives. In proportion 
as his views include, at all events, more certain- 
ties than those of other men, he is with good 
reason less fearful of contingencies. And if, in 
the course of executing his design, unexpected 
disastrous events should befal, but which are 
not owing to any thing wrong in the plan and 
principles of that design, but to foreign causes ; 



112 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

it will be characteristic of a strong mind to 
attribute these events discriminatively to their 
own causes, and not to the plan, which, there- 
fore, instead of being disliked and relinquished, 
will be still as much approved as before, and the 
man will proceed calmly to the sequel of it 
without any change of arrangement ; — unless 
indeed these sinister events should be of such 
consequence as to alter the whole state of things 
to which the plan was correctly adapted, and so 
create a necessity to form an entirely new one, 
adapted to that altered state. 

Though he do not absolutely despise the 
understandings of other men, he will perceive 
their dimensions as compared with his own, 
which will preserve its independence through 
every communication and encounter. It is 
however a part of this very independence, that 
he will hold himself free to alter his opinion, if 
the information which may be communicated 
to him shall bring sufficient reason. And as no 
one is so sensible of the importance of a com- 
plete acquaintance with a subject as the man 
who is always endeavouring to think conclu- 
sively, he will listen with the utmost attention 
to the information, which may sometimes be 
received from persons for whose judgment he 
has no great respect. The information which 
they may afford him is not at all the less 
valuable for the circumstance, that his practical 
inferences from it may be quite different from 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 113 

theirs. If they will only give him an accurate 
account of facts, he does not care how indiffe- 
rently they may reason on them. Counsel will 
in general have only so much weight with him 
as it supplies knowledge which may assist his 
judgment; he will yield nothing to it implicitly 
as authority, except when it comes from persons 
of approved and eminent wisdom ; but he may 
hear it with more candour and good temper, 
from being conscious of this independence of 
his judgment, than the man who is afraid lest 
the first person that begins to persuade him, 
should baffle his determination. He feels it 
entirely a work of his own to deliberate and to 
resolve, amidst all the advice which may be 
attempting to control him. If, with an as- 
surance of his intellect being of the highest 
order, he also holds a commanding station, he 
will feel it gratuitous to consult with any one, 
excepting merely to receive statements of facts. 
This appears to be exemplified in the man, who 
has lately shown the nations of Europe how 
large a portion of the world may, when Heaven 
permits, be at the mercy of the solitary work- 
ings of an individual mind. 

The strongest trial of this determination of 
judgment is in those cases of urgency where 
something must immediately be done, and the 
alternative of right or wrong is of important 
consequence ; as in the duty of a medical 
man, treating a patient whose situation at once 

i 



J 14 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

requires a daring practice, and puts it in painful 
doubt what to dare. A still stronger illustration 
is the case of a general who is compelled, in 
the very instant, to make dispositions on which 
the event of a battle, the lives of thousands of 
his men, or perhaps almost the fate of a nation, 
may depend. He may even be placed in a 
dilemma which appears equally dreadful on 
both sides. Such a predicament is described in 
Denon's account of one of the sanguinary con- 
flicts between the French and Mamelukes, as 
having for a while held in the most distressing 
hesitation General Desaix, though a prompt 
and intrepid commander. 



LETTER III. 

This indispensable basis, confidence of opi- 
nion, is however not enough to constitute the 
character in question. For many persons, who 
have been conscious and proud of a much 
stronger grasp of thought than ordinary men, 
and have held the most decided opinions on 
important things to be done, have yet exhibited, 
in the listlessness or inconstancy of their actions, 
a contrast and a disgrace to the operations of 
their understandings. For want of some cogent 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 115 

feeling impelling them to carry every internal 
decision into action, they have been still left 
where they were ; and a dignified judgment has 
been seen in the hapless plight of having no 
effective forces to execute its decrees. 

It is evident then, (and I perceive I have 
partly anticipated this article in the first letter,) 
that another essential principle of the character 
is, a total incapability of surrendering to indif- 
ference or delay the serious determinations of 
the mind. A strenuous will must accompany 
the conclusions of thought, and constantly in- 
cite the utmost efforts to give them a practical 
result. The intellect must be invested, if I may 
so describe it, with a glowing atmosphere of 
passion, under the influence of which, the cold 
dictates of reason take fire, and spring into 
active powers. 

Revert once more in your thoughts to the 
persons most remarkably distinguished by this 
quality. You will perceive, that instead of 
allowing themselves to sit down delighted after 
the labour of successful thinking, as if they 
had completed some great thing, they regard 
this labour but as a circumstance of preparation, 
and the conclusions resulting from it as of no 
more value, (till going into effect,) than the 
entombed lamps of the Rosicrucians. They 
are not disposed to be content in a region of 
mere ideas, while they ought to be advancing 
into the field of corresponding realities; they 

i2 



llf) ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

retire to that region sometimes, as ambitious 
adventurers anciently went to Delphi, to con- 
sult, but not to reside. You will therefore 
rind them almost uniformly in determined 
pursuit of some object, on which they fix a 
keen and steady look, never losing sight of 
it while they follow it through the confused 
multitude of other things. 

A person actuated by such a spirit, seems 
by his manner to say, Do you think that I 
would not disdain to adopt a purpose which I 
would not devote my utmost force to effect; 
or that having thus devoted my exertions. I 
will intermit or withdraw them, through in- 
dolence, debility, or caprice ; or that I will 
surrender my object to any interference ex- 
cept the uncontrollable dispensations of Provi- 
dence? No, I am linked to my determination 
with iron bands ; it clings to me as if a part 
of my destiny ; and if its frustration be, on 
the contrary, doomed a part of that destiny, 
it is doomed so only through calamity or 
death. 

This display of systematic energy seems 
to indicate a constitution of mind in which 
the passions are commensurate with the intel- 
lectual part, and at the same time hold an 
inseparable correspondence with it, like the 
faithful sympathy of the tides with the phases 
of the moon. There is such an equality and 
connexion, that subjects of the decisions of 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 117 

judgment become proportionally and of course 
the objects of passion. When the judgment 
decides with a very strong preference, that 
same strength of preference, actuating also 
the passions, devotes them with energy to 
the object, as long as it it thus approved ; 
and this will produce such a conduct as I 
have described. When therefore a firm, self- 
confiding, and unaltering judgment fails to 
make a decisive character, it is evident either 
that the passions in that mind are too languid 
to be capable of a strong and unremitting 
excitement, which defect makes an indolent 
or irresolute man ; or that they perversely 
sometimes coincide with judgment and some- 
times clash with it, which makes an incon- 
sistent or versatile man. 

There is no man so irresolute as not to act 
with determination in many single cases, where 
the motive is powerful and simple, and where 
there is no need of plan and perseverance ; but 
this gives no claim to the term character, which 
expresses the habitual ten our of a man's active 
being. The character may be displayed in 
the successive unconnected undertakings, which 
are each of limited extent, and end with the 
attainment of their particular objects. But 
it is seen in its most commanding aspect in 
those grand schemes of action, which have 
no necessary point of conclusion, which con- 
tinue on through successive years, and extend 



118 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

even to that dark period when the agent him- 
self is withdrawn from human sight. 

I have repeatedly, in conversation, remarked to 
you the effect of what has been called a Ruling 
Passion. When its object is noble, and an en- 
lightened understanding regulates its movements, 
it appears to me a great felicity ; but whether 
its object be noble or not, it infallibly creates, 
where it exists in great force, that active ardent 
constancy, which I describe as a capital feature 
of the decisive character. The Subject of 
such a commanding passion wonders, if indeed 
he were at leisure to wonder, at the persons 
who pretend to attach importance to an object 
which they make none but the most languid 
efforts to secure. The utmost powers of the 
man are constrained into the service of the 
favourite Cause by this passion, which sweeps 
away, as it advances, all the trivial objections 
and little opposing motives, and seems almost 
to open a way through impossibilities. This 
spirit comes on him in the morning as soon as 
he recovers his consciousness, and commands 
and impels him through the day, with a power 
from which he could not emancipate himself 
if he would. When the force of habit is added, 
the determination becomes invincible, and seems 
to assume rank with the great laws of nature, 
making it nearly as certain that such a man 
will persist in his course as that in the morning 
the sun will rise. 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 119 

A persisting untameable efficacy of soul 
gives a seductive and pernicious dignity even 
to a character which every moral principle 
forbids us to approve. Often in the narrations 
of history and fiction, an agent of the most 
dreadful designs compels a sentiment of deep 
respect for the unconquerable mind displayed 
in their execution. While we shudder at his 
activity, we say with regret, mingled with 
an admiration which borders on partiality, 
What a noble being this would have been, if 
goodness had been his destiny! The par- 
tiality is evinced in the very selection of 
terms, by which we show that we are tempted 
to refer his atrocity rather to his destiny than 
to his choice. I wonder whether an emotion 
like this, have not been experienced by each 
reader of Paradise Lost, relative to the Leader 
of the infernal spirits ; a proof, if such were 
the fact, of some insinuation of evil into the 
magnificent creation of the poet. In some 
of the high examples of ambition, (the ambition 
which is a vice), we almost revere the force 
of mind which impelled them forward through 
the longest series of action, superior to doubt 
and fluctuation, and disdainful of ease, of 
pleasures, of opposition, and of danger. We 
bend in homage before the ambitious spirit 
which reached the true sublime in the reply 
of Pompey to his friends, who dissuaded him 
from hazarding his life on a tempestuous sea 



120 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

in order to be at Rome on an important 
occasion : " It is necessary for me to go, it 
is not necessary for me to live." 

Revenge has produced wonderful examples of 
this unremitting constancy to a purpose. Zanga 
is a well-supported illustration. And you may 
have read of a real instance of a Spaniard, who, 
being injured by another inhabitant of the same 
town, resolved to destroy him : the other was 
apprised of this, and removed with the utmost 
secrecy, as he thought, to another town at a 
considerable distance, where however he had 
not been more than a day or two, before he 
found that his enemy also was there. He 
removed in the same manner to several parts of 
the kingdom, remote from each other; but in 
every place quickly perceived that his deadly 
pursuer was near him. At last he went to 
South America, where he had enjoyed his 
security but a very short time, before his re- 
lentless pursuer came up with him, and accom- 
plished his purpose. 

You may recollect the mention, in one of our 
conversations, of a young man who wasted in 
two or three years a large patrimony, in profli- 
gate revels with a number of worthless asso- 
ciates calling themselves his friends, till his 
last means were exhausted, when they of course 
treated him with neglect or contempt. Re- 
duced to absolute want, he one day went out of 
the house with an intention to put an end to his 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 121 

life ; but wandering awhile almost unconsciously, 
he came to the brow of an eminence which over- 
looked what were lately his estates. Here he 
sat down, and remained fixed in thought a 
number of hours, at the end of which he sprang 
from the ground with a vehement exulting emo- 
tion. He had formed his resolution, which was 
that all these estates should be his again ; he 
had formed his plan too, which he instantly 
began to execute. He walked hastily forward, 
determined to seize the very first opportunity, 
of however humble a kind, to gain any money, 
though it were ever so despicable a trifle, and 
resolved absolutely not to spend, if he could 
help it, a farthing of whatever he might obtain. 
The first thing that drew his attention was a 
heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement 
before a house. He offered himself to shovel or 
wheel them into the place where they were to 
be laid, and was employed. He received a few 
pence for the labour ; and then, in pursuance of 
the saving part of his plan, requested some 
small gratuity of meat and drink, which was 
given him. He then looked out for the next 
thing that might chance to offer ; and went, 
with indefatigable industry, through a succession 
of servile employments, in different places, of 
longer and shorter duration, still scrupulously 
avoiding, as far as possible, the expense of 
a penny. He promptly seized every oppor- 
tunity which could advance his design, without 



122 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

regarding the meanness of occupation or appear- 
ance. By this method he had gained, after a 
considerable time, money enough to purchase, 
in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he 
had taken pains to understand the value. He 
speedily but cautiously turned his first gains into 
second advantages ; retained without a single 
deviation his extreme parsimony ; and thus ad- 
vanced by degrees into larger transactions and 
incipient wealth . I did not hear, or have for- 
gotten, the continued course of his life ; but the 
final result was, that he more than recovered his 
lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, 
worth 60,000/. I have always recollected this 
as a signal instance, though in an unfortunate 
and ignoble direction, of decisive character, and 
of the extraordinary effect, which, according to 
general laws, belongs to the strongest form of 
such a character. 

But not less decision has been displayed by 
men of virtue. In this distinction no man ever 
exceeded, or ever will exceed, for instance, the 
late illustrious Howard. 

The energy of his determination was so great, 
that if, instead of being habitual, it had been 
shown only for a short time on particular occa- 
sions, it would have appeared a vehement im- 
petuosity ; but by being unintermitted, it had an 
equability of manner which scarcely appeared to 
exceed the tone of a calm constancy, it was so 
totally the reverse of any thing like turbulence 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 123 

or agitation. It was the calmness of an intensity 
kept uniform by the nature of the human mind 
forbidding it to be more, and by the character 
of the individual forbidding it to be less. The 
habitual passion of his mind was a pitch of 
excitement and impulsion almost equal to the 
temporary extremes and paroxysms of common 
minds; as a great river, in its customary state* 
is equal to a small or moderate one when swollen 
to a torrent. 

The moment of finishing his plans in deli- 
beration, and commencing them in action, was 
the same. I wonder what must have been the 
amount of that bribe, in emolument or plea- 
sure, that would have detained him a week 
inactive after their final adjustment. The law 
which carries water down a declivity, was not 
more unconquerable and invariable than the 
determination of his feelings toward the main 
object. The importance of this object held his 
faculties in a state of determination which was 
too rigid to be affected by lighter interests, and 
on which therefore the beauties of nature and 
of art had no power. He had no leisure feeling 
which he could spare to be diverted among the 
innumerable varieties of the extensive scene 
which he traversed; his subordinate feelings 
nearly lost their separate existence and opera- 
tion, by falling into the grand one. There 
have not been wanting trivial minds, to mark 
this as a fault in his character. But the mere 



124 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

men of taste ought to be silent respecting such 
a man as Howard ; he is above their sphere 
of judgment. The invisible spirits, who fulfil 
their commission of philanthropy among mortals, 
do not care about pictures, statues, and sump- 
tuous buildings ; and no more did he, when the 
time in which he must have inspected and 
admired them, would have been taken from 
the work to which he had consecrated his 
life. The curiosity which he might feel, was 
reduced to wait till the hour should arrive, 
when its gratification should be presented by 
conscience, (which kept a scrupulous charge of 
all his time,) as the duty of that hour. If he was 
still at every hour, when it came, fated to feel 
the attractions of the fine arts but the second 
claim, they might be sure of their revenge ; 
for no other man will ever visit Rome under 
such a despotic acknowledged rule of duty, 
as to refuse himself time for surveying the 
magnificence of its ruins. Such a sin against 
taste is very far beyond the reach of com- 
mon saintship to commit. It implied an in- 
conceivable severity of conviction, that he 
had one thing to do, and that he who would do j 
some great thing in this short life, must ap- 
ply himself to the work with such a con- 
centration of his forces, as, to idle spectators 
who live only to amuse themselves, looks like 
insanity. 

His attention was so strongly and tenaciously 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 125 

fixed on his object, that even at the greatest 
distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travel- 
lers, it appeared to him with a luminous dis- 
tinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled 
the toilsome length of labour and enterprise 
by which he was to reach it. So conspicuous 
was it before him, that not a step deviated 
from the direction, and every movement and 
every day was an approximation. As his me- 
thod referred every thing he did and thought 
to the end, and as his exertion did not relax 
for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom 
made, what is the utmost effect which may be 
granted to the last possible efforts of a human 
agent : and therefore what he did not accomplish, 
he might conclude to be placed beyond the 
sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to 
the immediate disposal of Providence. 

Unless the eternal happiness of mankind be 
an insignificant concern, and the passion to 
promote it an inglorious distinction, I may cite 
George Whitefleld as a noble instance of this 
attribute of the decisive character, this intense 
necessity of action. The great cause which 
was so languid a thing in the hands of many 
of its advocates, assumed in his administra- 
tions an unmitigable urgency. 

Many of the christian missionaries among 
the heathens, such as Brainerd, Elliot, and 
Schwartz, have displayed memorable exam- 
ples of this dedication of their whole being to 



126 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

their office, this abjuration of all the quiescent 
feelings. 

This would be the proper place for intro- 
ducing (if I did -not hesitate to introduce in any 
connexion with merely human instances) the 
example of him who said, " I must be about 
my Father's business. My meat and drink 
is to do the will of him that sent me, and to 
finish his work. I have a baptism to be bap- 
tized with, and how am I straitened till it be 
accomplished." 



LETTER IV. 

After the illustrations on the last article, 
it will seem but a very slight transition when I 
proceed to specify Courage, as an essential 
part of the decisive character. An intelligent 
man, adventurous only in thought, may sketch 
the most excellent scheme, and after duly ad- 
miring' it, and himself as its author, may be 
reduced to say, What a noble spirit that would 
be which should dare to realize this ! A noble 
spirit ! is it I ? And his heart may answer in 
the negative, while he glances a mortified 
thought of inquiry round to recollect persons 
who would venture what he dares not, and 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 127 

almost hopes not to find them. Or if by extreme 
effort he has brought himself to a resolution 
of braving the difficulty, he is compelled to 
execrate the timid fingerings that still keep 
him back from the trial. A man endowed with 
the complete character, might say, with a sober 
consciousness as remote from the spirit of bra- 
vado as it is from timidity, Thus, and thus, is my 
conviction and my. determination ; now for the 
phantoms of fear ; let me look them in the face ; 
their menacing glare and ominous tones will be 
lost on me : " I dare do all that may become a 
man." I trust I shall firmly confront every thing 
that threatens me while prosecuting my pur- 
pose, and I am prepared to meet the conse- 
quences of it when it is accomplished. I should 
despise a being, though it were myself, whose 
agency could be held enslaved by the gloomy 
shapes of imagination, by the haunting recol- 
lections of a dream, by the whistling or the 
howling of winds, by the shriek of owls, by the 
shades of midnight, or by the threats or frowns 
of man. I should be indignant to feel that, in 
the commencement of an adventure, I could 
think of nothing but the deep pit by the side of 
the way where I must walk, into which I may 
slide, the mad animal which it is not impossible 
that I may meet, or the assassin who may lurk 
in a thicket of yonder wood. And I disdain 
to compromise the interests that rouse me to 
action, for the privilege of an ignoble security. 



F 
128 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

As the conduct of a man of decision is always 
individual, and often singular, he may expect 
some serious trials of courage. For one thing, 
he may be encountered by the strongest dis- 
approbation of many of his connexions, and the 
censure of the greater part of the society where 
he is known. In this case, it is not a man of 
common spirit that can show himself just as at 
other times, and meet their anger in the same 
undisturbed manner as he would meet some 
ordinary inclemency of the weather ; that can, 
without harshness or violence, continue to effect 
every moment some part of his design, coolly 
replying to each ungracious look and indignant 
voice, I am sorry to oppose you : I am not un- 
friendly to you, while thus persisting in what 
excites your displeasure ; it w r ould please me to 
have your approbation and concurrence, and I 
think I should have them if you would seriously 
consider my reasons ; but meanwhile, I am 
superior to opinion, I am not to be intimidated 
by reproaches, nor would your favour and ap- 
plause be any reward for the sacrifice of my 
object. As you can do without my approbation, 
I can certainly do without yours ; it is enough 
that I can approve myself, it is enough that I 
appeal to the last authority in the creation. 
Amuse yourselves as you may, by continuing to 
censure or to rail ; / must continue to act. 

The attack of contempt and ridicule is per- 
haps a still greater trial of courage. It is felt 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 129 

by all to be an admirable thing, when it can in 
no degree be ascribed to the hardness of either 
stupidity or confirmed depravity, to sustain for a 
considerable time, or in numerous instances, the 
looks of scorn, or an unrestrained shower of 
taunts and jeers, with perfect composure, and 
proceed immediately after, or at the time, on 
the business that provokes all this ridicule. 
This invincibility of temper will often make 
even the scoffers themselves tired of the sport : 
they begin to feel that against such a man it is a 
poor sort of hostility to joke and sneer ; and 
there is nothing that people are more mortified 
to spend in vain than their scorn. Till, how- 
ever, a man shall become a veteran, he must 
reckon on sometimes meeting this trial in the 
course of virtuous enterprise. And if, at the sug- 
gestion of some meritorious but unprecedented 
proceeding, I hear him ask, with a look and 
tone of shrinking alarm, But will they not 
laugh at me ? — I know that he is not the person 
whom this essay attempts to describe. A man 
of the right kind would say, They will smile, 
they will laugh, will they ? Much good may it 
do them. I have something else to do than to 
trouble myself about their mirth. I do not 
care if the whole neighbourhood were to laugh 
in a chorus. I should indeed be sorry to see 
or hear such a number of fools, but pleased 
enough to find that they considered me as an 
outlaw to their tribe. The good to result 

K 



130 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

from my project will not be less,, because vain 
and shallow minds that cannot understand it, 
are diverted at it and at me. What should I 
think of my pursuits, if every trivial thoughtless 
being could comprehend or would applaud them ; 
and of myself, if. my courage needed levity and 
ignorance for their allies, or could be abashed at 
their sneers ? 

I remember, that on reading the account of 
the project for conquering Peru, formed by 
Almagro, Pizarro, and De Luques, while ab- 
horring the actuating principle of the men, I 
could not help admiring the hardihood of mind 
which made them regardless of scorn. These 
three individuals, before they had obtained any 
associates, or arms, or soldiers, or more than 
a very imperfect knowledge of the power of 
the kingdom they were to conquer, celebrated 
a solemn mass in one of the great churches, 
as a pledge and a commencement of the enter- 
prise, amidst the astonishment and contempt 
expressed by a multitude of people for what 
was deemed a monstrous project. They, 
however, proceeded through the service, and 
afterwards to their respective departments of 
preparation, with an apparently entire in- 
sensibility to all this triumphant contempt ; 
and thus gave the first proof of possessing 
that invincible firmness with which they af- 
terwards prosecuted their design, till they at- 
tained a success, the destructive process and 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 131 

many of the results of which humanity has 
ever deplored. 

Milton's Abdiel is a noble illustration of the 
courage that rises invincible above the derision 
not only of the multitude, but of the proud and 
elevated. 

But there may be situations where decision of 
character will be brought to trial against evils 
of a darker aspect than disapprobation or con- 
tempt. There may be the threatening of serious 
sufferings ; and very often, to dare as far as 
conscience or a great cause required, has been 
to dare to die. In almost all plans of great 
enterprise, a man must systematically dismiss, 
at the entrance, every wish to stipulate with his 
destiny for safety. He voluntarily treads within 
the precincts of danger ; and though it be pos- 
sible he may escape, he ought to be prepared 
with the fortitude of a self-devoted victim- 
This is the inevitable condition on which heroes, 
travellers or missionaries among savage nations, 
and reformers on a grand scale, must commence 
their career. Either they must allay their fire 
of enterprise, or abide the liability to be ex- 
ploded by it from the world. 

The last decisive energy of a rational courage, 
which confides in the Supreme Power, is very 
sublime. It makes a man who intrepidly dares 
every thing that can oppose or attack him 
within the whole sphere of mortality ; who will 
still press toward his object while death is 

k 2 



132 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

impending over him ; who would retain his 
purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world. 

It was in the true elevation of this character 
that Luther, when cited to appear at the Diet 
of Worms, under a very questionable assurance 
of safety from high authority, said to his friends, 
who conjured him not to go, and warned him 
by the example of John Huss, whom, in a simi- 
lar situation, the same pledge of protection had 
not saved from the fire, "I am called in the 
name of God to go, and I would go, though I 
were certain to meet as many devils in Worms 
as there are tiles on the houses." 

A reader of the Bible will not forget Daniel, 
braving in calm devotion the decree which vir- 
tually consigned him to the den of lions : or 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, saying to 
the tyrant, " We are not careful to answer thee 
in this matter," when the " burning fiery" fur- 
nace was in sight. 

The combination of these several essential 
principles constitutes that state of mind which 
is a grand requisite to decision of character, 
and perhaps its most striking distinction— the 
full agreement of the mind with itself, the con- 
senting co-operation of all its powers and all its 
dispositions. 

What an unfortunate task it would be for a 
charioteer, who had harnassed a set of horses, 
however strong, if he could not make them 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 133 

draw together; if, while one of them would 
go forward, another was restifY, another strug- 
gled backward, another started aside. If even 
one of the four were unmanageably perverse, 
while the three were tractable, an aged beggar 
with his crutch might leave Phaeton behind. 
So in a human being, unless the chief forces act 
consentaneously, there can be no inflexible 
vigour, either of will or execution. One dis- 
sentient principle in the mind not only deducts 
so much from the strength and mass of its 
agency, but counteracts and embarrasses all the 
rest. If the judgment holds in low estimation 
that which yet the passions incline to pursue, 
the pursuit will be irregular and inconstant, 
though it may have occasional fits of animation, 
when those passions happen to be highly sti- 
mulated. If there is an opposition between 
judgment and habit, though the man will 
probably continue to act mainly under the sway 
of habit in spite of his opinions, yet sometimes 
the intrusion of those opinions will have for the 
moment an effect like that of Prospero's wand 
on the limbs of Ferdinand ; and to be alter- 
nately impelled by habit, and checked by 
opinion, will be a state of vexatious debility. 
If two principal passions are opposed to each 
other, they will utterly distract any mind, 
whatever might be the force of its faculties if 
acting without embarrassment. The one pas- 
sion may be somewhat stronger than the other, 



134 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

and therefore just prevail barely enough to give 
a feeble impulse to the conduct of the man ; 
a feebleness which will continue till there be a 
greater disparity between these rivals, in conse- 
quence of a reinforcement to the slightly ascen- 
dent one, by new impressions, or the gradual 
strengthening of habit forming in its favour. 
The disparity must be no less than an absolute 
predominance of the one and subjection of the 
other, before the prevailing passion will have at 
liberty from the intestine conflict any large 
measure of its force to throw activity into the 
system of conduct. If, for instance, a man 
feels at once the love of fame which is to be 
gained only by arduous exertions, and an equal 
degree of the love of ease or pleasure which 
precludes those exertions ; if he is eager to show 
off in splendour, and yet anxious to save 
money ; if he has the curiosity of adventure, 
and yet that solicitude for safety, which forbids 
him to climb a precipice, descend into a cavern, 
or explore a dangerous wild ; if he has the stern 
will of a tyrant, and yet the relentings of a man; 
if he has the ambition to domineer over his 
fellow- mortals, counteracted by a reluctance to 
inflict so much mischief as it might cost to 
subdue them ; we may anticipate the irresolute 
contradictory tenour of his actions. Especially 
if conscience, that great troubler of the human 
breast, loudly declares against a man's wishes or 
projects, it will be a fatal enemy to decision, till 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 135 

it either reclaim the delinquent passions, or be 
debauched or laid dead by them. 

Lady Macbeth may be cited as a harmonious 
character, though the epithet seem strangely 
applied. She had capacity, ambition, and 
courage ; and she willed the death of the king. 
Macbeth had still more capacity, ambition, and 
courage ; and he also willed the murder of the 
king. But he had, besides, humanity, genero- 
sity, conscience, and some measure of what 
forms the pozver of conscience, the fear of a 
Superior Being. Consequently, when the dread- 
ful moment approached, he felt an insupport- 
able conflict between these opposite principles, 
and when it was arrived his utmost courage 
began to fail. The worst part of his nature fell 
prostrate under the power of the better ; the 
angel of goodness arrested the demon that 
grasped the dagger ; and would have taken that 
dagger away, if the pure demoniac firmness of 
his wife, who had none of these counteracting 
principles, had not shamed and hardened him to 
the deed. 

The poet's delineation of Richard III. offers 
a dreadful specimen of this indivisibility of 
mental impulse. After his determination was 
fixed, the whole mind with the compactest 
fidelity supported him in prosecuting it. Se- 
curely privileged from all interference of doubt 
that could linger, or humanity that could soften, 
or timidity that could shrink, he advanced with 



136 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

a concentrated constancy through scene after 
scene of atrocity, still fulfilling his vow to " cut 
his way through with a bloody axe." He did not 
waver while he pursued his object, nor relent 
when he seized it. 

Cromwell (whom I mention as a parallel, of 
course not to Richard's wickedness, but to his 
inflexible vigour,) lost his mental consistency 
in the latter end of a career which had displayed 
a superlative example of decision. It appears 
that the wish to be a king, at last arose in a 
mind which had contemned royalty, and battled 
it from the land. As far as he really had any 
republican principles and partialities, this new 
desire must have been a very untoward asso- 
ciate for them, and must have produced a 
schism in the breast where all the strong forces 
of thought and passion had acted till then in 
concord. The new form of ambition became 
just predominant enough to carry him, by slow 
degrees, through the embarrassment and the 
shame of this incongruity, into an irresolute 
determination to assume the crown ; so irreso- 
lute, that he was reduced again to a mortifying 
indecision by the remonstrances of some of his 
friends, which he could have slighted, and by an 
apprehension of the public disapprobation, which 
he could have braved, if some of the principles 
of his own mind had not shrunk or revolted 
from the design. When at last the motives for 
relinquishing this design prevailed, it was by so 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 137 

small a degree of preponderance, that his re- 
luctant refusal of the offered crown was the 
voice of only half his soul. 

Not only two distinct counteracting passions, 
but one passion interested for two objects, both 
equally desirable, but of which the one must be 
sacrificed, may annihilate in that instance the 
possibility of a resolute promptitude of conduct. 
I recollect reading in an old divine, a story from 
some historian, applicable to this remark. A 
father went to the agents of a tyrant, to endea- 
vour to redeem his two sons, military men, who, 
with some other captives of war, were con- 
demned to die. He offered, as a ransom, a sum 
of money, and to surrender his own life. The 
tyrant's agents who had them in charge, in- 
formed him that this equivalent would be ac- 
cepted for one of his sons, and for one only, 
because they should be accountable for the 
execution of two persons; he might therefore 
choose which he would redeem. Anxious to 
save even one of them thus at the expense of 
his own life, he yet was unable to decide which 
should die, by choosing the other to live, and 
remained in the agony of this dilemma so long 
that they were both irreversibly ordered for 
execution. 



138 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 



LETTER V. 

It were absurd to suppose that any human 
being can attain a state of mind capable of 
acting in all instances invariably with the full 
power of determination ; but it is obvious that 
many have possessed a habitual and very com- 
manding measure of it; and I think the pre- 
ceding remarks have taken account of its chief 
characteristics and constituent principles. A 
number of additional observations remains. 

The slightest view of human affairs shows 
what fatal and wide-spread mischief may be 
caused by men of this character, when misled 
or wicked. You have but to recollect the con- 
querors, despots, bigots, unjust conspirators, and 
signal villains of every class, who have blasted 
society by the relentless vigour which could act 
consistently and heroically wrong. Till there- 
fore the virtue of mankind be greater, there is 
reason to be pleased that so few of them are en- 
dowed with extraordinary decision. 

Even when dignified by wisdom and principle, 
this quality requires great care in the possessors 
of it to prevent its becoming unamiable. As 
it involves much practical assertion of superio- 
rity over other human beings, it should be as 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 139 

temperate and conciliating as possible in 
manner ; else pride will feel provoked, affection 
hurt, and weakness oppressed. But this is not 
the manner which will be most natural to such 
a man ; rather it will be high-toned, laconic, 
and careless of pleasing. He will have the 
appearance of keeping himself always at a dis- 
tance from social equality ; and his friends will 
feel as if their friendship were continually 
sliding into subserviency ; while his intimate 
connexions will think he does not attach the 
due importance either to their opinions or to 
their regard. His manner, when they differ 
from him, or complain, will be too much like 
the expression of slight estimation, and some- 
times of disdain. 

When he can accomplish a design by his 
own personal means alone, he may be disposed 
to separate himself to the work with the cold 
self-enclosed individuality on which no one has 
any hold, which seems to recognise no kindred 
being in the world, which takes little account of 
good wishes and kind concern, any more than 
it cares for opposition ; which seeks neither 
aid nor sympathy, and seems to say, I do 
not want any of you, and I am glad that I 
do not ; leave me alone to succeed or die. 
This has a very repellent effect on the friends 
who wished to feel themselves of some im- 
portance, in some way or other, to a person 
whom they are constrained to respect. When 



140 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

assistance is indispensable to his undertakings, 
his mode of signifying it will seem to command, 
rather than invite, the co-operation. 

In consultation, his manner will indicate that 
when he is equally with the rest in possession 
of the circumstances of the case, he does not 
at all expect to hear any opinions that shall 
correct his own ; but is satisfied that either his 
present conception of the subject is the just 
one, or that his own mind must originate that 
which shall be so. This difference will be 
apparent between him and his associates, that 
their manner of receiving his opinions is that of 
agreement or dissent ; his manner of receiving 
theirs is judicial — that of sanction or rejection. 
He has the tone of authoritatively deciding on 
what they say, but never of submitting to de- 
cision what himself says. Their coincidence 
with his views does not give him a firmer as- 
surance of his being right, nor their dissent 
any other impression than that of their inca- 
pacity to judge. If his feeling took the dis- 
tinct form of a reflection, it would be, Mine 
is the business of comprehending and devising, 
and I am here to rule this company, and not 
to consult them ; I want their docility, and not 
their arguments ; I am come, not to seek 
their assistance in thinking, but to determine 
their concurrence in executing what is already 
thought for them. Of course, many sugges- 
tions and reasons which appear important to 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 141 

those they come from, will be disposed of by 
him with a transient attention, or a light 
facility, that will seem very disrespectful to 
persons who possibly hesitate to admit that 
he is a denri-god, and that they are but idiots. 
Lord Chatham, in going out of the House of 
Commons, just as one of the speakers against 
him concluded his speech by emphatically 
urging what he perhaps rightly thought the 
unanswerable question, " Where can we find 
means to support such a war ?" turned round 
a moment, and gaily chanted, " Gentle shep- 
herd, tell me where." 

Even the assenting convictions, and practical 
compliances, yielded by degrees to this decisive 
man, may be somewhat undervalued ; as they 
will appear to him no more than simply coming, 
and that very slowly, to a right apprehension ; 
whereas he understood and decided justly from 
the first, and has been right all this while. 

He will be in danger of rejecting the just 
claims of charity for a little tolerance to the 
prejudices, hesitation, and timidity, of those 
with whom he has to act. He will say to 
himself, I wish there were any thing like man- 
hood among the beings called men ; and that 
they could have the sense and spirit not to 
let themselves be hampered by so many silly 
notions and childish fears ? Why cannot they 
either determine with some promptitude, or let 
me, that can, do it for them ? Am I to wait 



142 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

till debility become strong, and folly wise ? — 
If full scope be allowed to these tendencies, 
they may give too much of the character of a 
tyrant to even a man of elevated virtue, since, 
in the consciousness of the right intention, and 
the assurance of the wise contrivance, of his 
designs, he will hold himself justified in being 
regardless of every thing but the accomplish- 
ment of them. He will forget all respect for 
the feelings and liberties of beings who are 
accounted but a subordinate machinery, to be 
actuated, or to be thrown aside when not ac- 
tuated, by the spring of his commanding spirit. 

I have before asserted that this strong cha- 
racter may be exhibited with a mildness, or at 
least temperance, of manner ; and that, gene- 
rally, it will thus best secure its efficacy. But 
this mildness must often be at the cost of great 
effort ; and how much considerate policy or 
benevolent forbearance it will require, for a man 
to exert his utmost vigour in the very task, as it 
will appear to him at the time, of cramping that 
vigour ! — Lycurgus appears to have been a high 
example of conciliating patience in the resolute 
prosecution of designs to be effected among a 
perverse multitude. 

It is probable that the men most distinguished 
for decision, have not in general possessed a 
large share of tenderness ; and it is easy to 
imagine that the laws of our nature will, with 
great difficulty, allow the combination of the 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 143 

refined sensibilities with a hard, never-shrinking, 
never-yielding firmness. Is it not almost of the 
essence of this temperament to be free from 
even the perception of such impressions as cause 
a mind, weak through susceptibility, to relax or 
waver ; just as the skin of the elephant, or the 
armour of the rhinoceros, would be but indis- 
tinctly sensible to the application of a force by 
which a small animal, with a skin of thin and 
delicate texture, would be pierced or lacerated 
to death ? No doubt, this firmness consists 
partly in a commanding and repressive power 
over feelings, but it may consist fully as much 
in not having them. To be exquisitely alive 
to gentle impressions, and yet to be able to 
preserve, when the prosecution of a design 
requires it, an immovable heart amidst the 
most imperious causes of subduing emotion, 
is perhaps not an impossible constitution of 
mind, but it must be the rarest endowment of 
humanity. 

If you take a view of the first rank of decisive 
men, you will observe that their faculties have 
been too much bent to arduous effort, their 
souls have been kept in too military an attitude, 
they have been begirt with too much iron, for 
the melting movements of the heart. Their 
whole being appears too much arrogated and 
occupied by the spirit of severe design, urging 
them toward some defined end, to be sufficiently 
at ease for the indolent complacency, the soft 



144 OX DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

lassitude, of gentle affections, which love to 
surrender themselves to the present felicities, 
forgetful of all " enterprises of great pith and 
moment." The man seems rigorously intent 
still on his own affairs, as he walks, or regales, 
or mingles with domestic society ; and appears 
to despise all the feelings that will not take 
rank with the grave labours and decisions of 
intellect, or coalesce with the unremitting pas- 
sion which is his spring of action : he values 
not feelings which he cannot employ either as 
weapons or as engines. He loves to be ac- 
tuated by a passion so strong as to compel 
into exercise the utmost force of his being, and 
fix him in a tone, compared with which, the 
gentle affections, if he had felt them, would be 
accounted tameness, and their exciting causes 
insipidity. 

Yet we cannot willingly admit that those 
gentle affections are totally incompatible with 
the most impregnable resolution and vigour ; 
nor can we help believing that such men as 
Timoleon, Alfred, and Gustavus Adolphus, must 
have been very fascinating associates in private 
and domestic life, whenever the urgency of their 
affairs would allow them to withdraw from the 
interests of statesmen and warriors, to indulge 
the affections of men : most fascinating, for, 
with relations or friends who had any right per- 
ceptions, an effect of the strong character would 
be recognised in a peculiar charm imparted by 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 145 

it to the gentle moods and seasons. The firm- 
ness and energy of the man whom nothing could 
subdue, would exalt the quality of the tender- 
ness which softened him to recline. 

But it were much easier to enumerate a long- 
train of ancient and modern examples of the 
vigour unmitigated by the sensibility. Perhaps 
indeed these indomitable spirits have yielded 
sometimes to some species of love, as a mode 
of amusing their passions for an interval, till 
greater engagements have summoned them 
into their proper element ; when they have 
shown how little the sentiment was an element 
of the heart, by the ease with which they could 
relinquish the temporary favourite. In other 
cases, where there have not been the selfish 
inducements, which this passion supplies, to the 
exhibition of something like softness, and where 
they have been left to the trial of what they 
might feel of the sympathies of humanity in their 
simplicity, no rock on earth could be harder. 

The celebrated King of Prussia occurs to 
me, as a capital instance of the decisive cha- 
racter; and there occurs to me, at the same 
time, one of the anecdotes related of him.* 

* The authenticity of this anecdote, which I read in some 
trifling fugitive publication many years since, has been ques- 
tioned. Possibly enough it might be one of the many 
stories only half true which could not fail to go abroad 
concerning a man who made, in his day, so great a figure. 
But as it does not at all misrepresent the general character 

L 



146 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

Intending to make, in the night, an important 
movement in his camp, which was in sight of 
the enemy, he gave orders that by eight o'clock 
all the lights in the camp should be put out, 
on pain of death. The moment that the time 
was passed, he walked out himself to see whether 
all were dark. He found a light in the tent 
of a Captain Zietern, which he entered just as 
the officer was folding up a letter. Zietern 
knew him, and instantly fell on his knees to 
intreat his mercy. The king asked to whom 
he had been writing ; he said it was a letter 
to his wife, which he had retained the candle 
these few minutes beyond the time in order to 
finish. The king coolly ordered him to rise, 
and write one line more, which he should 
dictate. This line was to inform his wife, 
without any explanation, that by such an hour 
the next day, he should be a dead man. 
The letter was then sealed, and despatched as 
it had been intended ; and, the next day, the 
captain was executed. I say nothing of the 
justice of the punishment itself; but this cool 
barbarity to the affection both of the officer 
and his wife, proved how little the decisive hero 
and reputed philosopher was capable of the 

of his mind, since there are many incontrovertible facts prov- 
ing against him as great a degree of cruelty as this anecdote 
would charge on him, the want of means to prove this 
one fact does not seem to impose any necessity for omitting 
the illustration. 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 147 

tender affections, or of sympathizing with their 
pains. 

At the same time, it is proper to observe, that 
the case may easily occur, in which a man, 
sustaining a high responsibility, must be reso- 
lute to act in a manner which may make him 
appear to want the finer feelings. He may be 
placed under the necessity of doing what he 
knows will cause pain to persons of a character 
to feel it severely. He may be obliged to resist 
affectionate wishes, expostulations, entreaties, 
and tears. Take this same instance. Suppose 
the wife of Zietern had come to supplicate for 
him, not only the remission of the punishment 
of death, but an exemption from any other 
severe punishment, which was perhaps justly 
due to the violation of such an order issued 
no doubt for important reasons; it had then 
probably been the duty and the virtue of the 
commander to deny the most interesting sup- 
pliant, and to resist the most pathetic appeals 
which could have been made to his feelings. 



148 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 



LETTER VI. 



Various circumstances might be specified as 
adapted to confirm suc,h a character as I have 
attempted to describe. I shall notice two or 
three. 

And first, opposition. The passions which 
inspirit men to resistance, and sustain them in 
it, such as anger, indignation, and resentment, 
are evidently far stronger than those which 
have reference to friendly objects ; and if any of 
these strong passions are frequently excited by 
opposition, they infuse a certain quality into the 
general temperament of the mind, which re- 
mains after the immediate excitement is past. 
They continually strengthen the principle of 
re-action ; they put the mind in the habitual 
array of defence and self-assertion, and often 
give it the aspect and the posture of a gladiator, 
when there appears no confronting combatant. 
When these passions are provoked in such a 
person as I describe, it is probable that each 
excitement is followed by a greater increase of 
this principle of re-action than in other men, 
because this result is so congenial with his 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 149 

naturally resolute disposition. Let him be 
opposed then, throughout the prosecution of 
one of his designs, or in the general tenour of 
his actions, and this constant opposition would 
render him the service of an ally, by augmenting 
the resisting and defying power of his mind. 
An irresolute spirit indeed might be quelled and 
subjugated by a formidable and persisting oppo- 
sition ; but the strong wind which blows out a 
taper, exasperates a powerful fire (if there be 
fuel enough) to an indefinite intensity. It 
would be found, in fact, on a recollection of 
instances, that many of the persons most con- 
spicuous for decision, have been exercised and 
forced to this high tone of spirit in having to 
make their way through opposition and contest ; 
a discipline under which they were wrought to 
both a prompt acuteness of faculty, and an 
inflexibility of temper, hardly attainable even 
by minds of great natural strength, if brought 
forward into the affairs of life under indulgent 
auspices, and in habits of easy and friendly 
coincidence with those around them. Often, 
however, it is granted, the firmness matured 
by such discipline is, in a man of virtue, accom- 
panied with a Catonic severity, and in a mere 
man of the world is an unhumanized repulsive 
hardness. 

Desertion may be another cause conducive to 
the consolidation of this character. A kind 
mutually reclining dependence, is certainly for 



150 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

the happiness of human beings ; but this necessa- 
rily prevents the developement of some great in- 
dividual powers which would be forced into action 
by a state of abandonment. I lately happened 
to notice, with some surprise, an ivy, which, 
finding nothing to cling to beyond a certain 
point, had shot off into a bold elastic stem, with 
an air of as much independence as any branch of 
oak in the vicinity. So a human being thrown, 
whether by cruelty, justice, or accident, from 
all social support and kindness, if he have any 
vigour of spirit, and be not in the bodily debility 
of either childhood or age, will begin to act for 
himself with a resolution which will appear like 
a new faculty. And the most absolute inflexi- 
bility is likely to characterize the resolution of 
an individual who is obliged to deliberate 
without consultation, and execute without as- 
sistance. He will disdain to yield to beings 
who have rejected him, or to forego a particle 
of his designs or advantages in concession to 
the opinions or the will of all the world. 
Himself, his pursuits, and his interests, are 
emphatically his own. " The world is not 
his friend, nor the world's law ;" and therefore 
he becomes regardless of every thing but its 
power, of which his policy carefully takes the 
measure, in order to ascertain his own means 
of action and impunity, as set against the 
world's means of annoyance, prevention, and 
retaliation. 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 151 

If this person have but little humanity or 
principle, he will become a misanthrope, or 
perhaps a villain, who will resemble a solitary- 
wild beast of the night, which makes prey of 
every thing it can overpower, and cares for 
nothing but fire. If he be capable of grand 
conception and enterprise, he may, like Spar- 
tacus, make a daring attempt against the whole 
social order of the state where he has been 
oppressed. If he be of great humanity and 
principle, he may become one of the noblest 
of mankind, and display a generous virtue to 
which society had no claim, and which it is not 
worthy to reward, if it should at last become 
inclined. No, he will say, give your rewards 
to another ; as it has been no part of my ob- 
ject to gain them, they are not necessary to 
my satisfaction. I have done good, without 
expecting your gratitude, and without caring 
for your approbation. If conscience and my 
Creator had not been more auspicious than 
you, none of these virtues would ever have 
opened to the day. When I ought to have 
been an object of your compassion, I might 
have perished ; now, when you find I can serve 
your interests, you will affect to acknowledge 
me and reward me ; but I will abide by my 
destiny to verify the principle that virtue is its 
own reward. — In either case, virtuous or wicked, 
the man who has been compelled to do without 
assistance, will spurn interference. 



152 



OxN DECISION OF CHARACTER. 



Common life would supply illustrations of 
the effect of desertion, in examples of some 
of the most resolute men having become such 
partly from being left friendless in early life. 
The case has also sometimes happened, that 
a wife and mother, remarkable perhaps for 
gentleness and acquiescence before, has been 
compelled, after the death of her husband on 
whom she depended, and when she has met 
with nothing but neglect or unkindness from 
relations and those who had been accounted 
friends, to adopt a plan of her own, and has 
executed it with a resolution which has as- 
tonished even herself. 

One regrets that the signal examples, real or 
fictitious, that most readily present themselves, 
are still of the depraved order. I fancy myself 
to see Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage, 
where no arch or column, that remained un- 
shaken amidst the desolation, could present a 
stronger image of a firmness beyond the power 
of disaster to subdue. The rigid constancy 
which had before distinguished his character, 
would be aggravated by his finding himself 
thus an outcast from all human society ; and 
he would proudly shake off every sentiment 
that had ever for an instant checked his de- 
signs in the way of reminding him of social 
obligations. The lonely individual was placed 
in the alternative of becoming the victim or 
the antagonist of the power of the empire. 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 153 

While, with a spirit capable of confronting 
that power, he resolved, amidst those ruins, on 
a great experiment, he would enjoy a kind of 
sullen luxury in surveying the dreary situation 
into which he was driven, and recollecting the 
circumstances of his expulsion ; since they 
would seem to him to sanction an unlimited 
vengeance ; to present what had been his 
country as the pure legitimate prize for des- 
perate achievement ; and to give him a proud 
consequence in being reduced to maintain singly 
a mortal quarrel against the bulk of mankind. 
He would exult that the very desolation of his 
condition rendered but the more complete the 
proof of his possessing a mind which no mis- 
fortunes could repress or intimidate, and that 
it kindled an animosity intense enough to force 
that mind from firm endurance into impetuous 
action. He would feel that he became stronger 
for enterprise, m proportion as his exile and 
destitution rendered him more inexorable ; and 
the sentiment with which he quitted his soli- 
tude would be, Rome expelled her patriot, let 
her receive her evil genius. 

The decision of Satan, in Paradise Lost, is 
represented as consolidated by his reflections 
on his hopeless banishment from heaven, which 
oppress him with sadness for some moments, 
but he soon resumes his invincible spirit, and 
utters the impious but sublime sentiment, 

" What matter where, if / be still the same." 



154 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

You remember how this effect of desertion is 
represented in Charles de Moor.* His father's 
supposed cruel rejection consigned him irre- 
trievably to the career of atrocious enterprise, 
in which, notwithstanding the most interesting 
emotions of humanity and tenderness, he per- 
sisted with heroic determination till he con- 
sidered his destiny as accomplished. 

Success tends considerably to reinforce this 
commanding quality. It is true that a man 
possessing it in a high degree will not lose it 
by occasional failure ; for if the failure was 
caused by something entirely beyond the reach 
of human knowledge and ability, he will re- 
member that fortitude is the virtue required 
in meeting unfavourable events which in no 
sense depended on him ; if by something which 
might have been known and prevented, he 
will feel that even the experience of failure 
completes his competence, by admonishing 
his prudence, and enlarging his understand- 
ing. But as schemes and measures of action 
rightly adjusted to their proposed ends will 
generally attain them, continual failure would 
show something essentially wrong in a man's 
system, and destroy his confidence, or else ex- 
pose it as mere absurdity or obstinacy. On 
the contrary, when a man has ascertained by 
experiment the justness of his calculations and 

* A wildly extravagant, certainly, but most imposing and 
gigantic character in Schiller's tragedy, The Robbers. 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 155 

the extent of his powers,, when he has measured 
his force with various persons, when he has 
braved and vanquished difficulty, and partly 
seized the prize, he will carry forward the result 
of all this in an intrepid self-sufficiency for what- 
ever may yet await him. 

In some men, whose lives have been spent 
in constant perils, continued success has pro- 
duced a confidence beyond its rational effect, 
by inspiring a presumption that the common 
laws of human affairs were, in their case, su- 
perseded by the decrees of a peculiar destiny, 
securing them from almost the possibility of 
disaster ; and this superstitious feeling, though 
it has displaced the unconquerable resolution 
from its rational basis, has often produced 
the most wonderful effects. This dictated 
Cassar's expression to the mariner who was 
terrified at the storm and billows, "What art 
thou afraid of? — thy vessel carries Caesar " 
The brave men in the times of the English Com- 
monwealth were, some of them, indebted in a 
degree for their magnanimity to this idea of a 
special destination, entertained as a religious 
sentiment. 

The wilfulness of an obstinate person is some- 
times fortified by some single instance of re- 
markable success in his undertakings, which 
is promptly recalled in every case where his 
decisions are questioned or opposed, as a proof, 
or ground of just presumption, that he must 



156 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

in this instance too be right ; especially if that 
one success happened contrary to your pre- 
dictions. 

I shall only add, and without illustration, 
that the habit of associating with inferiors, 
among whom a man can always, and there- 
fore does always, take the precedence and 
give the law, is conducive to a subordinate 
coarse kind of decision of character. You may 
see this exemplified any day in an ignorant 
country 'squire among his vassals ; especially 
if he wear the lordly superaddition of Justice 
of the Peace. 

In viewing the characters and actions of the 
men who have possessed in imperial eminence 
the quality which I have attempted to de- 
scribe, one cannot but wish it were possible 
to know how much of this mighty superiority 
was created by the circumstances in which 
they were placed ; but it is inevitable to be- 
lieve that there was some vast intrinsic dif- 
ference from ordinary men in the original con- 
stitutional structure of the mind. In observing 
lately a man who appeared too vacant almost 
to think of a purpose, too indifferent to re- 
solve upon it, and too sluggish to execute it 
if he had resolved, I was distinctly struck with 
the idea of the distance between him and 
Marius, of whom I happened to have been 
reading; and it was infinitely beyond my 
power to believe that any circumstances on 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 157 

earth, though ever so perfectly combined and 
adapted, would have produced in this man, if 
placed under their fullest influence from his 
childhood, any resemblance (unless perhaps 
the courage to enact a diminutive imitation 
in revenge and cruelty) of the formidable 
Roman. 

It is needless to discuss whether a person 
who is practically evinced, at the age of ma- 
turity, to want the stamina of this character, 
can, by any process, acquire it. Indeed such 
a person cannot have sufficient force of mill 
to make the complete experiment. If there 
were the unconquerable will that would per- 
sist to seize all possible means, and apply 
them in order to attain, if I may so express 
it, this stronger mode of active existence, it 
would prove the possession already of a high 
degree of the character sought ; and if there 
is not this will, how then is the supposed at- 
tainment possible ? 

Yet though it is improbable that a very 
irresolute man can ever become a habitually 
decisive one, it should be observed, that since 
there are degrees of this powerful quality, and 
since the essential principles of it, when par- 
tially existing in those degrees, cannot be 
supposed subject to definite and ultimate limi- 
tation, like the dimension of the bodily stature, 
it might be possible to apply a discipline which 
should advance a man from the lowest degree 



158 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

to the next, from that to the third, and how 
much further — it will be worth his trying, if 
his first successful experiments have not cost 
more in the efforts for making the attainment, 
than he judges likely to be repaid by any good 
he shall gain from its exercise. I have but a 
very imperfect conception of the discipline ; but 
will suggest a hint or two. 

In the first place, the indispensable neces- 
sity of a clear and comprehensive knowledge 
of the concerns before us, seems too obvious 
for remark ; and yet no man has been suffi- 
ciently sensible of it, till he has been placed 
in circumstances which forced him to act 
before he had time, or after he had made 
ineffectual efforts, to obtain the needful in- 
formation and understanding. The pain of 
having brought things to an unfortunate issue, 
is hardly greater than that of proceeding in 
the conscious ignorance which continually 
threatens such an issue. While thus pro- 
ceeding at hazard, under some compulsion 
which makes it impossible for him to remain 
in inaction, a man looks round for infor- 
mation as eagerly as a benighted wanderer 
would for the light of a human dwelling. He 
perhaps labours to recall what he thinks he 
once heard or read as relating to a similar 
situation, without dreaming at that time that 
such instruction could ever come to be of 
importance to him ; and is distressed to find 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 159 

his best recollection so indistinct as to be 
useless. He would give a considerable sum, 
if some particular book could be brought to 
him at the instant ; or a certain document 
which he believes to be in existence ; or 
the detail of a process, the terms of a pre- 
scription, or the model of an implement. 
He thinks how many people know, without 
its being of any present use to them, exactly 
what could be of such important service to 
him, if he could know it. In some cases, 
a line, a sentence, a monosyllable of affirm- 
ing or denying, or a momentary sight of an 
object, would be inexpressibly valuable and 
welcome. And he resolves that if he can 
once happily escape from the present diffi- 
culty, he will apply himself day and night 
to obtain knowledge, not concerning one par- 
ticular matter only, but divers others, in 
provision against possible emergencies, rather 
than be so involved and harassed again. It 
might really be of service to have been oc- 
casionally forced to act under the disadvan- 
tage of conscious ignorance (if the affair was 
not so important as to allow the consequence 
to be very injurious), as an effectual lesson 
on the necessity of knowledge in order to 
decision either of plan or execution. It must 
indeed be an extreme case that will compel 
a considerate man to act in the absence 
of knowledge; yet he may sometimes be 



160 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

necessitated to proceed to action, when he is 
sensible his information is far from extending 
to the whole of the concern in which he is 
going to commit himself. And in this case, 
he will feel no little uneasiness, while trans- 
acting that part of it in which his knowledge 
is competent, when he looks forward to the 
point where that knowledge terminates ; un- 
less he be conscious of possessing an exceed- 
ingly prompt faculty of catching information 
at the moment that he wants it for use ; 
as Indians set out on a long journey with 
but a trifling stock of provision, because they 
are sure that their bows or guns will procure 
it by the way. It is one of the nicest points 
of wisdom to decide how much less than 
complete knowledge, in any question of prac- 
tical interest, will warrant a man to venture on 
an undertaking, in the presumption that the 
deficiency will be supplied in time to prevent 
either perplexity or disaster. 

A thousand familiar instances show the ef- 
fect of complete knowledge on determination. 
An artisan may be said to be decisive as to 
the mode of working a piece of iron or wood, 
because he is certain of the proper process 
and the effect. A man perfectly acquainted 
with the intricate paths of a woodland dis- 
trict, takes the right one without a moment's 
hesitation ; while a stranger, who has only some 
very vague information, is lost in perplexity. 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 161 

It is easy to imagine what a number of cir- 
cumstances may occur in the course of a life, 
or even of a year, in which a man cannot 
thus readily determine, and thus confidently 
proceed without a compass and an exactness 
of knowledge which few persons have appli- 
cation enough to acquire. And it would be 
frightful to know to what extent human in- 
terests are committed to the direction of ig- 
norance. What a consolatory doctrine is that 
of a particular Providence ! 

In connexion with the necessity of know- 
ledge, I would suggest the importance of 
cultivating, with the utmost industry, a con- 
clusive manner of thinking. In the first place, 
let the general course of thinking partake of 
the nature of reasoning; and let it be re- 
membered that this name does not belong 
to a series of thoughts and fancies which 
follow one another without deduction or de- 
pendence, and which can therefore no more 
bring a subject to a proper issue, than a 
number of separate links will answer the me- 
chanical purpose of a chain. The conclusion 
which terminates such a series, does not de- 
serve the name of result or conclusion, since 
it has little more than a casual connexion 
with what went before; the conclusion might 
as properly have taken place at an earlier point 
of the train, or have been deferred till that 
train had been extended much further. Instead 

M 



1G2 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

of having been busily employed in this kind 
of thinking, for perhaps many hours, a man 
might possibly as well have been sleeping 
all the time; since the single thought which 
is now to determine his conduct, might have 
happened to be the first thought that oc- 
curred to him on awaking. It only happens 
to occur to him now ; it does not follow from 
what he has been thinking these hours ; at 
least, he cannot prove that some other thought 
might not just as appropriately have come in its 
place at the end, and to make an end, of this 
long series. It is easy to see how feeble that 
determination is likely to be, which is formed 
on so narrow a ground as the last accidental 
idea that comes into the mind, or on so loose 
a ground as this crude uncombined assemblage 
of ideas. Indeed it is difficult to form a de- 
termination at all on such slight ground. A 
man delays, and waits for some more satis- 
factory thought to occur to him ; and perhaps 
he has not waited long, before an idea arises 
in his mind of a quite contrary tendency to 
the last. As this additional idea is not, more 
than that which preceded it, the result of any 
process of reasoning, nor brings with it any argu- 
ments, it may be expected to give place soon to 
another, and still another ; and they are all in 
succession of equal authority, that is properly of 
none. If at last an idea occurs to him which 
seems of considerable authority, he may here 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 163 

make a stand, and adopt his resolution, with 
firmness, as he thinks, and commence the ex- 
ecution. But still, if he cannot see whence 
the principle which has determined him de- 
rives its authority — on what it holds for 
that authority — his resolution is likely to 
prove treacherous and evanescent in any se- 
rious trial. A principle so little verified by 
sound reasoning, is not terra firma for a 
man to trust himself upon ; it is only as a 
slight incrustation on a yielding element ; it 
is like the sand compacted into a thin surface 
on the lake Serbonis, which broke away under 
the unfortunate army which had begun to ad- 
vance on it, mistaking it for solid ground. 
— These remarks may seem to refer only to 
a single instance of deliberation ; but they are 
equally applicable to all the deliberations and 
undertakings of a man's life ; the same con- 
nected manner of thinking, which is so ne- 
cessary to give firmness of determination and 
of conduct in a particular instance, will, if 
habitual, greatly contribute to form a decisive 
character. 

Not only should thinking be thus reduced, 
by a strong and patient discipline, to a train 
or process, in which all the parts at once de- 
pend upon and support one another, but also 
this train should be followed on to a full 
conclusion. It should be held as a law ge- 
nerally in force, that the question must be 

m 2 



164 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

disposed of before it is let alone. The mind 
may carry on this accurate process to some 
length, and then stop through indolence, or 
start away through levity ; but it can never 
possess that rational confidence in its opi- 
nions which is requisite to the character in 
question, till it is conscious of acquiring them 
from an exercise of thought continued on to 
its result. The habit of thinking thus com- 
pletely is indispensable to the general charac- 
ter of decision ; and in any particular instance, 
it is found that short pieces of courses of 
reasoning, though correct as far as they go, 
are inadequate to make a man master of the 
immediate concern. They are besides of little 
value for aid to future thinking ; because from 
being left thus incomplete they are but slightly 
retained by the mind, and soon sink away; 
in the same manner as the walls of a structure 
left unfinished speedily moulder. 

After these remarks, I should take occasion 
to observe, that a vigorous exercise of thought 
may sometimes for a while seem to increase 
the difficulty of decision, by discovering a 
great number of unthought-of reasons for a 
measure and against it, so that the most dis- 
criminating mind may, during a short space, 
find itself in the state of the magnetic needle 
under the equator. But no case in the world 
can really have a perfect equality of opposite 
reasons ; nor will it long appear to have it, 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 165 

in the estimate of a clear and well-disciplined 
intellect, which after some time will ascertain, 
though the difference is small, which side of the 
question has ten, and which has but nine. At 
any rate this is the mind to come nearest in the 
approximation. 

Another thing that would powerfully assist 
toward complete decision, both in the par- 
ticular instance, and in the general spirit of 
the character, is for a man to place himself 
in a situation analogous to that in which Cassar 
placed his soldiers, when he burnt the ships 
which brought them to land. If his judg- 
ment is really decided, let him commit himself 
irretrievably, by doing something which shall 
oblige him to do more, which shall lay on 
him the necessity of doing all. If a man re- 
solves as a general intention to be a philan- 
thropist, I would say to him, Form some 
actual plan of philanthropy, and begin the 
execution of it to-morrow, (if I may not say 
to-day,) so explicitly, that you cannot relinquish 
it without becoming degraded even in your 
own estimation. If a man would be a hero, 
let him, if it be possible to find a good cause 
in arms, go presently to the camp. If a man 
is desirous of a travelling adventure through 
distant countries, and deliberately approves 
both his purpose and his scheme, let him 
actually prepare to set off. Let him not 
still dwell, in imagination, on mountains, 



166 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 

rivers, and temples ; but give directions about 
his remittances, his personal equipments, or 
the carriage, or the vessel, in which he is to 
go. Ledyard surprised the official person who 
asked him how soon he could be ready to 
set off for the interior of Africa, by replying 
promptly and firmly, " To-morrow." 

Again, it is highly conducive to a manly 
firmness, that the interests in which it is ex- 
erted should be of a dignified order, so as to 
give the passions an ample scope, and a noble 
object. The degradation they suffer in being 
devoted to mean and trivial pursuits, often 
perceived to be such in spite of every fallacy 
of the imagination, would in general, I should 
think, also debilitate their energy, and therefore 
preclude strength of character, to which no- 
thing can be more adverse, than to have 
the fire of the passions damped by the mortifi- 
cation of feeling contempt for the object, 
as often as its meanness is betrayed by failure 
of the delusion which invests it. 

And finally, I would repeat that one should 
think a man's own conscientious approbation 
of his conduct must be of vast importance to 
his decision in the outset, and his persevering 
constancy ; and I would attribute it to defect 
of memory that a greater proportion of the 
examples, introduced for illustration in this 
essay, do not exhibit goodness in union with 
the moral and intellectual power so conspicuous 



ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 167 

in the quality described. Certainly a bright 
constellation of such examples might be dis- 
played ; yet it is the mortifying truth that 
much the greater number of men, pre-eminent 
for decision, have been such as could not 
have their own serious approbation, except 
through an utter perversion of judgment or 
abolition of conscience. And it is melancholy 
to contemplate beings represented in our 
imagination as of adequate power, (when they 
possessed great external means to give effect 
to the force of their minds,) for the grandest 
utility, for vindicating each good cause which 
has languished in a world adverse to all good- 
ness, and for intimidating the collective vices 
of a nation or an age — to contemplate such 
beings as becoming themselves the mighty 
exemplars, giants, and champions of those 
vices ; and it is fearful to follow them in 
thought, from this region, of which not all 
the powers and difficulties and inhabitants 
together could have subdued their adamantine 
resolution, to the Supreme Tribunal where 
that resolution must tremble and melt away. 



ESSAY III. 

ON THE APPLICATION OF THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 



LETTER I. 

MY DEAR FRIEND, 

A thoughtful judge of sentiments, books, and 
men, will often find reason to regret that the 
language of censure is so easy and so undefined. 
It costs no labour, and needs no intellect, to 
pronounce the words, foolish, stupid, dull, 
odious, absurd, ridiculous. The weakest or 
most uncultivated mind may therefore gratify 
its vanity, laziness, and malice, all at once, 
by a prompt application of vague condemnatory 
words, where a wise and liberal man would not 
feel himself warranted to pronounce without 
the most deliberate consideration, and where 
such consideration might perhaps result in 
applause. Thus excellent performances, in the 
department of thinking or of action, might be 
consigned to contempt, if there were no better 
judges, on the authority of those who could 
not so much as understand them. A man who 
wishes some decency and sense to prevail in 



170 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

the circulation of opinions, will do well, when 
he hears these decisions of ignorant arrogance, 
to call for a precise explication of the manner 
in which the terms of the verdict apply to the 
subject. 

There is a competent number of words for 
this use of cheap censure ; but though a man 
doubts not he is giving a tolerable proof of 
sagacity in the confident readiness to condemn, 
even with this impotence of language, he may 
however have an irksome consciousness that 
there is wanting to him a certain dexterity of 
biting expression that would do more mischief 
than the words, dull, stupid, and ridiculous, 
which he is repeating many times to compen- 
sate for the incapacity of hitting off the right 
thing at once. These vague epithets describe 
nothing, discriminate nothing ; they express no 
species, are as applicable to ten thousand things 
as to this one, and he has before employed them 
on a numberless diversity of subjects. He has 
a fretted feeling of this their inefficiency ; and 
can perceive that censure or contempt has the 
smartest effect, when its expressions have a 
special cast, which fits them more peculiarly to 
the present subject than to another ; and he is 
therefore secretly dissatisfied in uttering the 
expressions which say " about it and about it," 
but do not say the thing itself; which showing 
his good will, betray his deficient power. He 
wants words and phrases which would make the 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 171 

edge of his clumsy meaning fall just where it 
ought. Yes, he wants words ; for his meaning 
is sharp, he knows, if only the words would 
come. 

Discriminative censure must be conveyed, 
either by a marked expression of thought in a 
sentence, or by an epithet or other term so 
specifically appropriate, that the single word is 
sufficient to fix the condemnation by the mere 
precision with which it describes. But as the 
censurer perhaps cannot succeed in either of 
these ways, he is willing to seek some other 
resource. And he may often find it in cant 
terms, which have a more spiteful force, and 
seem to have more particularity of meaning, 
than plain common words, while yet needing no 
shrewdness for their application. Each of these 
is supposed to denominate some one class or 
character of scorned or reprobated things, but 
so little defines it, that dull malice may venture 
to assign to the class any thing which it would 
desire to throw under the odium of the deno- 
mination. Such words serve for a mode of 
collective execution, somewhat like the vessels 
which, in a season of outrage in a neigh- 
bouring country, received a promiscuous crowd 
of reputed criminals, of unexamined and 
dubious similarity, and were then sunk in the 
flood. You cannot wonder that such compen- 
dious words of decision, which can give quick 
vent to crude impatient censure, emit plenty 



172 



ON THE APPLICATION OF 



of antipathy in a few syllables, and save the 
condemner the difficulty of telling exactly what 
he wants to mean, should have had an exten- 
sive circulation. 

Puritan was, doubtless, welcomed as a term 
most luckily invented or revived, when it began 
to be applied in contempt to a class of men of 
whom the world was not worthy. Its odd pe- 
culiarity gave it almost such an advantage as 
that of a proper name among the lumber of 
common words by which they were described 
and reviled ; while yet it meant any thing, 
every thing, which the vain world disliked in 
the devout and conscientious character. To 
the more sluggish it saved, and to the more 
loquacious it relieved, the labour of endlessly 
repeating, " demure rogues," " sanctimonious 
pretenders,' 1 " formal hypocrites." " 

The abusive faculty of this word has long 
been extinct, and left it to become a grave and 
almost venerable term in history ; but some 
word of a similar cast was indispensably neces- 
sary to the vulgar of both kinds. The vain 
and malignant spirit which had decried the 
elevated piety of the Puritans, sought about 
(as Milton describes the wicked one in Para- 
dise) for some convenient form in which it 
might again come forth to hiss at zealous Chris- 
tianity ; and in another lucky moment fell 
on the term Methodist. If there is no sense in 
the word, as now applied, there seems however 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 173 

to be a great deal of aptitude and execution. 
It has the advantage of being comprehensive as 
a general denomination, and yet opprobrious as 
a special badge, for every thing that ignorance 
and folly may mistake for fanaticism, or that 
malice may wilfully assign to it. Whenever a 
formalist feels it his duty to sneer at those ope- 
rations of religion on the passions, by which he 
has never been disturbed, he has only to call 
them methodistical ; and though the word be 
both so trite and so vague, he feels as if he had 
uttered a good pungent thing. There is a satiric 
smartness in the word, though there be none 
in the man. In default of keen faculty in the 
mind, it is delightful thus to find something that 
will do as well, ready bottled up in odd terms. 
It is not less convenient to a profligate, or a 
coxcomb, whose propriety of character is to be 
supported by laughing indiscriminately at reli- 
gion in every form ; the one, to evince that his 
courage is not sapped by conscience, the other, 
to make the best advantage of his instinct of 
catching at impiety as a compensative substitute 
for sense. The word Methodism so readily sets 
aside all religion as superstitious folly, that they 
pronounce it with an air as if no more needed 
to be said. Such terms have a pleasant facility 
of throwing away the matter in question to 
scorn, without any trouble of making a definite 
intelligible charge of extravagance or delusion, 
and attempting to prove it. 



174 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

In politics, Jacobinism has, of late years, been 
the brand by which all sentiments referring to 
the principles of liberty, in a way to censure the 
measures of the ascendent party in the State, 
have been sentenced to execration. What a 
quantity of noisy zeal would have been quashed 
in dead silence, if it had been possible to 
enforce the substitution of statements and de- 
finitions for this vulgar, senseless, but most 
efficacious term of reproach. What a number 
of persons have vented the superabundance of 
their loyalty, or their rancour, by means of this 
and two or three similar words, who, if by some 
sudden lapse of memory they had lost these 
two or three words, and a few names of persons, 
would have looked round with an idiotic va- 
cancy, totally at a loss what was the subject of 
their anger or their approbation. One may 
here catch a glimpse of the policy of men of 
a superior class, in employing these terms as 
much as the vulgar, in order to keep them in 
active currency. If a rude populace, whose 
understandings they despise, and do not wish 
to improve, could not be excited and kept up 
to loyal animosity, but by means of a clear 
comprehension of what they were to oppose, 
and of the reasons why, a political party would 
have but feeble hold on popular zeal, and 
might vociferate, and intrigue, and fret itself 
to nothing. But if a single word, devised in 
hatred and defamation of political liberty, can 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 175 

be made the symbol of all that is absurd and 
execrable, so that the very sound of it shall 
irritate the passions of this ignorant and scorned 
multitude, as dogs have been taught to bark 
at the name of a neighbouring tyrant, it is a 
commodious expedient for rendering these pas- 
sions available and subservient to the interests 
of those who despise, while they cajole, their 
duped auxiliaries. The popular passions are 
the imps and demons of the political conjuror, 
and he can raise them, as other conjurors affect 
to do theirs, by terms of gibberish.* 

The epithet romantic has obviously no simi- 
larity to these words in its coinage, but it 
is considerably like them in the mode and 
effect of its application. For having partly 
quitted the rank of plain epithets, it has become 
a convenient exploding word, of more special 
deriding significance than the other words of its 
order, such as wild, extravagant, visionary. It 
is a standard expression of contemptuous 
despatch, which you have often heard pro- 
nounced with a very self-complacent air, that 
said, " How much wiser I am than some peo- 
ple," by the indolent and inanimate on what 

* It is curious that, within no long time after this was 
first printed, the terms jacobin and jacobinism became com- 
pletely worn out and obsolete. It is not worth a guess 
how long the term radical, to which the duty of the defunct 
ones was transferred, may continue of any service against 
the doctrines and persons of reformists. 



176 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

they would not acknowledge practicable, by 
the apes of prudence on what they accounted 
foolishly adventurous, and by the slaves of cus- 
tom on what startled them as singular. The 
class of absurdities which it denominates is left 
so undefined, that all the views and sentiments 
which a narrow cold mind could not like or 
understand in an ample and fervid one, might be 
referred thither ; and yet the word seems, or 
assumes, to discriminate their character so con- 
clusively as to put them out of argument. With 
this cast of sapience and vacancy of sense, it is 
allowed to depreciate without being account- 
able ; it has the license of a parrot, to call 
names without being taxed with insolence. And 
when any sentiments are decisively stigmatized 
with this denomination, it would require con- 
siderable courage to attempt their rescue and 
defence ; since the imputation which the epithet 
fixes on them will pass upon the advocate ; and 
he may expect to be himself enrolled among the 
heroes of whom Don Quixote is from time im- 
memorial the commander-in-chief. At least he 
may be assigned to that class which occupies a 
dubious frontier space between the rational and 
the insane. 

If, however, the suggestions and sketches 
which I had endeavoured to exhibit as interest- 
ing and practicable, were attempted to be turned 
into vanity and " thin air" by the enunciation 
of this epithet, I would say, Pray now what do 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 177 

you mean by romantic? Have you, as you 
pronounce it, any precise conception in your 
mind, which you can give in some other words, 
and then distinctly fix the charge ? Or is this a 
word, which, because it is often used in some 
such way as you now use it, may be left to tell 
its own meaning better than the speaker knows 
how to explain it ? Or perhaps you mean, that 
the notions which I am expressing recall to 
your mind, as kindred ideas, the fantastic images 
of Romance ; and that you cannot help thinking 
of enchanted castles, encounters with giants, 
solemn exorcisms, fortunate surprises, knights 
and wizards. You cannot exactly distinguish 
what the absurdity in my notions is, but you 
fancy what it is like. You therefore condemn 
it, not by defining its nature and exposing its 
irrationality, but by applying an epithet which 
arbitrarily assigns it to a class of things of which 
the absurdity stands notorious and unquestioned : 
for evidently the epithet should signify a re- 
semblance to what is the prominent folly in the 
works of romance. Well then, take advantage 
of this resemblance, to bring your censure into 
something of a definite form. Delineate pre- 
cisely the chief features of the absurdity of the 
works of romance, and then show how the same 
characteristics are flagrant on my notions or 
schemes. I will then renounce at once all my 
visionary follies, and be henceforward at least a 
very sober, if I cannot be a very rational man, 

N 



178 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

The great general characteristic of those 
works has been the ascendency of imagination 
over judgment. And the description is correct 
as applied to the books, however well endowed 
with intellect the authors of them might be. If 
they chose, for their own and others' amuse- 
ment, to dismiss a sound judgment awhile from 
its office, to stimulate their imagination to the 
wildest extravagances, and to depicture the 
fantastic career in writing, the book might be 
partly the same thing as if produced by a mind 
in which sound judgment had no place ; it 
would exhibit imagination actually ascendent by 
the writer's voluntary indulgence, though not 
necessarily so by the constitution of his mind. 
It was a different case, if a writer kept his judg- 
ment active, amidst these very extravagances, 
with the intention of shaping and directing them 
to some particular end, of satire or sober truth. 
But however, the romances of the ages of chi- 
valry and the preceding times, were composed 
under neither of these intellectual conditions. 
They were not the productions either of men 
who, possessing a sound judgment, chose for- 
mally to suspend its exercise, in order to riot 
awhile in scenes of extravagant fancy, only 
keeping that judgment so far awake as to re- 
tain a continual consciousness in what degree 
they xvere extravagant ; or of men designing to 
give effect to truth or malice under the disguise 
of a fantastic exhibition. It is evident that the 



THE EPITHET ROMAN VIC. 179 

authors were under the real ascendency of 
imagination; so that, though they must at 
times have been conscious of committing great 
excesses, yet they were on the whole wonder- 
fully little sensible of the enormous extrava- 
gance of their fictions. They could drive on 
their career through monstrous absurdities of 
description and narration, without, apparently, 
any check from a sense of inconsistency, im- 
probability, or impossibility; and with an air 
as if they really reckoned on being taken for 
the veritable describers of something that could 
exist or happen within the mundane system. 
And the general state of intellect of the age 
in which they lived seems to have been well 
fitted to allow them the utmost license. The 
irrationality of the romancers, and of the age, 
provoked the observing and powerful mind of 
Cervantes to expose it, by means of a parallel 
and still more extravagant representation of 
the prevalence of imagination over reason, 
drawn in a ludicrous form, by which he ren- 
dered the folly palpable even to the sense of 
that age. From that time the delirium abated ; 
the works which inspirited its ravings have 
been blown away beyond the knowledge and 
curiosity of any but bibliomaniacs ; and the 
fabrication of such is gone among the lost 
branches of manufacturing art. 

Yet romance was in some form to be re- 
tained, as indispensable to the craving of the 

n2 



180 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

human mind for something more vivid, more 
elated, more wonderful, than the plain realities 
of life ; as a kind of mental balloon, for mount- 
ing into the air from the ground of ordinary 
experience. To afford this extra-rational kind 
of luxury, it was requisite that the fictions 
should still partake, in a limited degree, of the 
quality of the earlier romance. The writers 
were not to be the dupes of wild fancy ; they 
were not to feign marvels in such a manner 
as if they knew no better; they were not 
wholly to lose sight of the actual system of 
things, but to keep within some measures of 
relation and proportion to it ; and yet they 
were required to disregard the strict laws of 
verisimilitude in shaping their inventions, and 
to magnify and diversify them with an indul- 
gence of fancy very considerably beyond the 
bounds of probability. Without this their fic- 
tions would have lost what was regarded as the 
essential quality of romance. 

If, therefore, the epithet Romantic, as now 
employed for description and censure of cha- 
racter, sentiments, and schemes, is to be un- 
derstood as expressive of the quality which 
is characteristic of that class of fictions, it 
imputes, in substance, a great excess of ima- 
gination in proportion to judgment ; and it 
imputes, in particulars, such errors as natu- 
rally result from that excess. — It may be 
worth while to look for some of the practical 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 181 

exemplifications of this unfortunate dispro- 
portion between these two powers of the 
mind. 

It should first be noted that a defective 
judgment is not necessarily accompanied by 
any thing in the least romantic in disposition, 
since the imagination may be as inert as the 
judgment is weak ; and this double and equal 
deficiency produces mere dulness. But it is 
obvious that a weak judgment may be asso- 
ciated with an active strength of that faculty 
which is of such lively power even in childhood, 
in dreams, and in the state of insanity. 

Again, there may be an intellect not posi- 
tively feeble (supposing it estimated separately 
from the other power) yet practically reduced 
to debility by a disproportionate imagination, 
which continually invades its sphere, and 
takes every thing out of its hands. And then 
the case is made worse by the unfortunate 
circumstance, that the exercise of the faculty 
which should be repressed, is incomparably 
more easy and delightful, than of that which 
should be promoted. Indeed the term exer- 
cise is hardly applicable to the activity of a 
faculty which can be active without effort 
which is so far from needing to be stimulated 
to its works of magic, that it often scorns the 
most serious injunctions to forbear. It is not 
exercise, but indulgence ; and even minds pos- 
sessing much of the power of understanding, 



182 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

may be little disposed to undergo the labour 
of it, when amidst the ease of the deepest in- 
dolence they can revel in the activity of a more 
animating employment. Imagination may be 
indulged till it usurp an entire ascendency over 
the mind, and then every subject presented to 
that mind will be taken under the action of 
x imagination, instead of understanding ; ima- 
gination will throw its colours where the in- 
tellectual faculty ought to draw its lines ; will 
accumulate metaphors where reason ought to 
deduce arguments ; images will take the place 
of thoughts, and scenes of disquisitions. The 
whole mind may become at length something 
like a hemisphere of cloud-scenery, filled with 
an ever-moving train of changing melting forms, 
of every colour, mingled with rainbows, me- 
teors, and an occasional gleam of pure sun- 
light, all vanishing away, the mental like this 
natural imagery, when its hour is up, without 
leaving any thing behind but the wish to re- 
cover the vision. And yet, the while, this 
series of visions may be mistaken for opera- 
tions of thought, and each cloudy image be 
admitted in the place of a proposition or 
a reason; or it may even be mistaken for 
something sublimer than thinking. The in- 
fluence of this habit of dwelling on the 
beautiful fallacious forms of imagination, will 
accompany the mind into the most serious 
speculations, or rather musings, on the real 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 183 

world, and what is to be done in it, and ex- 
pected ; as the image from looking at any daz- 
zling object still appears before the eye wherever 
it turns. The vulgar materials that constitute 
the actual economy of the world, will rise up 
to sight in fictitious forms, which the mind 
cannot disenchant into plain reality ; which 
indeed it may hardly suspect of being illusory ; 
and would not be very desirous to reduce to 
the proof if it did. For such a mind is not 
disposed to examine, with any severity of in- 
spection, the real condition of things. It is 
content with ignorance, because environed 
with something far more delicious than such 
knowledge, in the paradise which imagination 
creates. In that paradise it walks delighted, 
till some imperious circumstance of real life call 
it thence, and gladly escapes thither again as 
soon as the cause of the avocation can be got 
rid of. There, every thing is beautiful and 
noble as could be desired to form the residence 
of angels. If a tenth part of the felicities 
that have been enjoyed, the great actions 
that have been performed, the beneficent in- 
stitutions that have been established, and the 
beautiful objects that have been seen, in that 
happy region, could have been imported into 
this terrestrial place — what a delightful thing, 
my dear friend, it would have been each 
morning to awake and look on such a world 
once more. 



184 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

It is not strange that a faculty, of which 
the exercise is so easy and bewitching, and 
the scope infinite, should obtain a predomi- 
nance over judgment, especially in young 
persons, and in such as may have been 
brought up, like Rasselas and his companions, 
/ in great seclusion from the sight and experi- 
ence of the world. Indeed, a considerable 
vigour of imagination, though it be at the 
expense of a frequent predominance over 
juvenile understanding, seems necessary, in 
early life, to cause a generous expansion of 
the passions, by giving the most lively aspect 
to the objects which must attract them in 
order to draw forth into activity the faculties 
of our nature. It may also contribute to 
prepare the mind for the exercise of that 
faith which converses with things unseen, 
but converses with them through the medium 
of those ideal forms in which imagination 
presents them, and in which only a strong 
imagination can present them impressively.* 

* The Divine Being is the only one of these objects 
which a Christian would wish it possible to contemplate 
without the aid of imagination ; and every reflective man 
has felt how difficult it is to apprehend even this Object 
without the intervention of an image. In thinking of the 
transactions and personages of history, the final events 
of time foretold by prophecy, the state of good men in 
another world, the superior ranks of intelligent agents, 
&c. he has often had occasion to wish his imagination much 
more vivid. 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 185 

And I should deem it the indication of a 
character not destined to excel in the liberal, 
the energetic, or the devout qualities, if I ob- 
served in the youthful age a close confinement 
of thought to bare truth and minute accuracy, 
with an entire aversion to the splendours, am- 
plifications, and excursions of fancy. The opi- 
nion is warranted by instances of persons so 
distinguished in youth, who have become sub- 
sequently very intelligent indeed, in a certain 
way, but dry, cold, precise, devoted to detail, 
and incapable of being carried away one mo- 
ment by any inspiration of the beautiful or 
the sublime. They seem to have only the bare 
intellectual mechanism of the human mind, 
without the addition of what is to give it life 
and sentiment. They give one an impression 
analogous to that of the leafless trees ob- 
served in winter, admirable for the distinct 
exhibition of their branches and minute rami- 
fications so clearly defined on the sky, but 
destitute of all the green soft luxury of foli- 
age which is requisite to make a perfect tree. 
And the affections which may exist in such 
minds seem to have a bleak abode, somewhat 
like those bare deserted nests which you have 
often seen in such trees. 

If, indeed, the signs of this exclusive under- 
standing indicated also such an extraordinary 
vigour of the faculty, as to promise a very 
great mathematician or metaphysician, one 



186 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

would perhaps be content to forego some of 
the properties which form a complete mind,, 
for the sake of this pre-eminence of one of its 
endowments ; even though the person were to 
be so defective in sentiment and fancy, that, 
as the story goes of an eminent mathema- 
tician, he could read through a most ani- 
mated and splendid epic poem, and on being 
asked what he thought of it, gravely reply, 
" What does it prove ?" But the want of 
imagination is never an evidence, and per- 
haps but rarely a concomitant, of superior 
understanding. 

Imagination may be allowed the ascendency 
in early youth ; the case should be reversed in 
mature life; and if it is not, a man may con- 
sider his mind either as not the most happily 
constructed, or as unwisely disciplined. The 
latter indeed is probably true in every such 
instance. 






THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 187 



LETTER II. 

The ascendency of imagination operates in 
various modes ; I will endeavour to distinguish 
those which may justly be called romantic. 

The extravagance of imagination in romance 
has very much consisted in the display of a 
destiny and course of life totally unlike the 
common condition of mankind. And you may 
have observed in living individuals, that one 
of the effects sometimes produced by the pre- 
dominance of this faculty is, a persuasion in 
a person's own mind that he is born to some 
peculiar and extraordinary destiny, while yet 
there are no extraordinary indications in the 
person or his circumstances. There was some- 
thing rational in the early presentiment which 
some distinguished men have entertained of 
their future career. When a celebrated gene- 
ral of the present times exclaimed, after per- 
forming the common military exercise, as one 
of a company of juvenile volunteers, "I shall 
be a commander-in-chief,"* a sagacious ob- 
server of the signs of talents yet but partially 
developed, might have thought it indeed a 

* Related of Moreau. 



188 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

rather sanguine, but probably not a quite ab- 
surd anticipation. An elder and intelligent 
associate of Milton's youth might without much 
difficulty have believed himself listening to an 
oracle, when a spirit which was shaping in 
such gigantic proportions avowed to him a 
confidence, of being destined to produce a work 
which should distinguish the nation and the 
age. The opening of uncommon faculties may 
be sometimes inspirited by such anticipations ; 
which the young genius may be allowed to 
express, perhaps as a stimulus encouraged to 
indulge. But in most instances these magnifi- 
cent presumptions form, in the observer's eye, 
a ludicrous contrast with the situation and ap- 
parent abilities of the person who entertains 
them. And in the event, how few such anti- 
cipations have been proved the genuine prompt- 
ings of an extraordinary mind. 

The visionary presumption of a peculiar des- 
tiny is entertained in more forms than that 
, which implies a confidence of possessing un- 
common talent. It is often the flattering self- 
assurance simply of a life of singular felicity. 
The captive of fancy fondly imagines his pro- 
spect of life as a delicious vale, where from 
each side every stream of pleasure is to flow 
down to his feet; and while it cannot but be 
seen that innumerable evils do harass other 
human beings, some mighty spell is to protect 
him against them all. He takes no deliberate 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 189 

account of what is inevitable in the lot of 
humanity, of the sober probabilities of his own 
situation, or of any principles in the consti- 
tution of his mind which are perhaps very 
exactly calculated to frustrate the anticipation 
and the scheme of happiness. 

If this excessive imagination is combined with 
tendencies to affection, it makes a person sen- 
timentatty romantic. With a great, and what 
might, in a mind of finer elements, be a just 
contempt of the ordinary rate of attachments, 
both in friendship and love, he indulges a most 
assured confidence that his peculiar lot is to 
realize all the wonders of generous, virtuous, 
noble, unalienable friendship, or of enraptured, 
uninterrupted, and unextinguishable love, that 
the inebriation of fiction and poetry ever sung; 
while perhaps a shrewd indifferent observer 
can descry nothing in the horoscope, or the 
character, or the actual circumstances of the 
man, or in the qualities of the human crea- 
tures that he adores, or in the nature of his 
devotion, to promise an elevation or perma- 
nence of felicity beyond the destiny of com- 
mon mortals. 

If a passion for variety and novelty accom- 
panies this extravagant imagination, it will 
exclude from its bold sketches of future life 
every thing like confined regularity, and com- 
mon plodding occupations. It will suggest that 
/ was born for an adventurer, whose story will 



190 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

one day be a wonder of the world. Perhaps 
I am to be an universal traveller; and there 
is not on the globe a grand city, or ruin, or 
volcano, or cataract, but I must see it. Debi- 
lity of constitution, deficiency of means, innu- 
merable perils, unknown languages, oppressive 
toils, extinguished curiosity, worn out fortitude, 
failing health, and the shortness of life, are very 
possibly all left out of the account. 

If there is in the disposition a love of what 
is called glory, and an idolatry of those capa- 
cious and intrepid spirits one of which has 
often, in a portentous crisis, decided, by an 
admirable series of exertions, or by one grand 
exploit of intelligence and valour, the des- 
tiny of armies and of empires, a predominant 
imagination may be led to revel amidst the 
splendours of military achievement, and to 
flatter the man that he too is to be a hero, 
a great commander. 

When a mind under this influence recurs 
to precedents as a foundation and a warrant 
of its expectations, they are never the usual, 
but always the extraordinary examples, that 
are contemplated. An observer of the ordi- 
nary instances of friendship is perhaps heard 
to assert, that the sentiment is sufficiently 
languid in general to admit of an almost un- 
qualified self-interest, of absence without pain, 
and of ultimate indifference. Well, so let it be ; 
Damon and Pythias were friends of a different 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 191 

order, and our friendship is to be like theirs 
Or if the subject of musing and hope is the 
union in which love commonly results, it may 
be true and obvious enough that the gene- 
rality of instances would not seem to tell of 
more than a mediocrity of happiness in this 
relation ; but a visionary person does not live 
within the same world with these examples- 
The few instances which have been recorded 
of tender and never-dying enthusiasm, together 
with the numerous ones which romance and 
poetry have created, form the class to which 
he belongs, and from whose enchanting his- 
tory, excepting their misfortunes, he reasons to 
his own future experience. So too the man, 
whose fancy anticipates political or martial dis- 
tinction, allows his thoughts to revert conti- 
nually to those names which a rare conjunction 
of talents and circumstances has elevated into 
fame ; forgetting that many thousands of men of 
great ability have died in at least comparative 
obscurity, for want of situations in which to 
display themselves ; and never suspecting it 
possible that his own abilities are not com- 
petent to any thing great, if some extra- 
ordinary event were just now to place him in 
the most opportune concurrence of circum- 
stances. That there has been one very signal 
man to a million, more avails to the presump- 
tion that he shall be a signal man, than there 
having been a million to one signal man, infers 



192 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

a probability of his remaining one of the mul- 
titude. 

You will generally observe, that persons thus 
self-appointed, of either sex, to be exceptions 
to the usual lot of humanity, endeavour at a 
kind of consistency of character, by a great 
aversion to the common modes of action and 
language, and a habitual affectation of some- 
thing extraordinary. They will perhaps dis- 
dain regular hours, punctuality to engagements, 
usual dresses, a homely diction, and common 
forms of transacting business ; this you are to 
regard as the impulse of a spirit whose high 
vocation authorizes it to renounce all signs of 
relation to vulgar minds. 

The epithet romantic then may be justly 
applied to those presumptions (if entertained 
after the childish or very youthful age) of a 
peculiarly happy or important destiny in life, 
which are not clearly founded on certain pal- 
pable distinctions of character or situation, or 
which greatly exceed the sober prognostics af- 
forded by those distinctions. — It should be 
observed here that wishes merely do not con- 
stitute a character romantic. A person may 
sometimes let his mind wander into vain wishes 
for all the fine things on earth, and yet be too 
sober to expect any of them. In this case 
however he will often check and reproach 
himself for the folly of indulging in such 
mental dissoluteness. 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 193 

The absurdity of such anticipations consists 
simply in the improbability of their being 
realized, and not in their objects being uncon- 
genial with the human mind ; but another 
effect of the predominance of imagination may 
be a disposition to form schemes or indulge 
expectations essentially incongruous with the 
nature of man. Perhaps however you will 
say, What is that nature ? Is it not a mere 
passive thing, variable almost to infinity, ac- 
cording to climate, to institutions, and to the 
different ages of time ? Even taking it in a 
civilized state, what relation is there between 
such a form of human nature as that displayed 
at Sparta, and, for instance, the modern society 
denominated Quakers, or the Moravian Frater- 
nity ? And how can we ascertain what is 
congenial with it or not, unless itself were first 
ascertained ? Allow me to say, that I speak of 
human nature in its most general principles 
only, as social, self-interested, inclined to the 
wrong, slow to improve, passing through several 
states of capacity and feeling in the successive 
periods of life, and the few other such perma- 
nent distinctions. Any of these distinctions 
may vanish from the sight of a visionary mind, 
while forming, for itself or for others, such 
schemes as could have sprung only from an 
imagination become wayward through its un- 
controlled power, and its victory over sober 
reason. I remember, for example, a person, 



194 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

very young I confess, who was so enchanted 
with the stories of Gregory Lopez, and one 
or two more pious hermits, as almost to form 
the resolution to betake himself to some wilder- 
ness and live as Gregory did. At any time, the 
very word hermit was enough to transport him, 
like the witch's broomstick, to the solitary hut, 
which was delightfully surrounded by shady 
solemn groves, mossy rocks, crystal streams, 
and gardens of radishes. While this fancy 
lasted, he forgot the most obvious of all facts, 
that man is not made for habitual solitude, nor 
can endure it without misery, except when 
transformed into a genuine superstitious ascetic ; 
— questionable whether even then.* 

Contrary to human nature, is the proper de- 
scription of those theories of education, and 
those flatteries of parental hope, which presume 
that young people in general may be matured 
to eminent wisdom, and adorned with the uni- 
versality of noble attainments, by the period 
at which in fact the intellectual faculty is but 
beginning to operate with any thing like clear- 
ness and sustained force. Because some 

* Lopez indeed was often visited by pious persons who 
sought his instructions ; this was a great modification of the 
loneliness, and of the trial involved in enduring it ; but my 
hermit was fond of the idea of an uninhabited island, or of 
a wilderness so deep that these good people would not 
have been able to come at him, without a more formidable 
pilgrimage than was ever yet made for the sake of obtaining 
instruction. 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 195 

individuals, remarkable exceptions to the na- 
tural character of youth, have in their very 
childhood advanced beyond the youthful giddi- 
ness, and debility of reason, and have displayed, 
at the age perhaps of twenty, a wonderful as- 
semblage of all the strong and all the graceful 
endowments, it therefore only needs a proper 
system of education to make other young 
people, (at least those of my family, the parent 
thinks,) be no longer what nature has always 
made youth to be. Let this be adopted, and 
we shall see multitudes at that age possessing 
the judgment of sages, or the diversified ac- 
quirements and graces of all-accomplished gen- 
tlemen and ladies. And what, pray, are the 
beings which are to become, by the discipline 
of ten or a dozen years, such finished examples 
of various excellence ? Not, surely, these boys 
here, that love nothing so much as tops, 
marbles, and petty mischief — and those girls, 
that have yet attained but few ideas beyond the 
dressing of dolls ? Yes, even these ! 

The same charge of being unadapted to man, 
falls on the speculations of those philosophers 
and philanthropists, who have eloquently dis- 
played the happiness, and asserted the prac- 
ticability, of something near an equality of 
property and modes of life throughout society. 
Those who really anticipated or projected the 
practical trial of the system, must have for- 
gotten on what planet those apartments were 

o 2 



196 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

built, or those arbours were growing, in which 
they were favoured with such visions. For in 
these visions they beheld the ambition of one 
part of the inhabitants, the craft or audacity 
of another, the avarice of another, the stupidity 
or indolence of another, and the selfishness of 
almost all, as mere adventitious faults, super- 
induced on the character of the species, and 
instantly flying off at the approach of better 
institutions, which shall prove, to the confusion 
of all the calumniators of human nature, that 
nothing is so congenial to it as industry, 
moderation, and disinterestedness. It is at the 
same time but just to acknowledge, that many 
of them have admitted the necessity of such a 
grand transformation as to make man another 
being previously to the adoption of the system. 
This is all very well : when the proper race of 
men shall come from Utopia, the system and 
polity may very properly come along with them ; 
or these sketches of it, prepared for them by 
us, may be carefully preserved here, in volumes 
more precious than those of the Sibyls, against 
their arrival. Till then, the sober observers 
of the human character will read these beau- 
tiful theories as romances, offering the fairest 
game for sarcasm in their splenetic hours, 
when they are disgusted with human nature, 
and infusing melancholy in their benevolent 
ones, when they look on it with a commiserating 
and almost desponding sentiment. 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 197 

The character of the age of chivalry presents 
itself conspicuously among this class of illustra- 
tions. One of its most prominent distinctions 
was, an immense incongruity with the simplest 
principles of human nature. For instance, in 
the concern of love : a generous young man 
became attached to an interesting young 
woman — interesting as he believed, from having 
once seen her ; for probably he never heard 
her speak. His heart would naturally prompt 
him to seek access to the object whose society, 
it told him, would make him happy ; and if in a 
great measure debarred from that society, he 
would surrender himself to the melting mood 
of the passion, in the musings of pensive retire- 
ment. But this was not the way. He must 
exile himself for successive years from her so- 
ciety and vicinity, and every soft indulgence 
of feeling, and rush boldly into all sorts of 
hardships and perils, deeming no misfortune so 
great as not to find constant occasions of 
hazarding his life among the roughest foes, or, 
if he could find or fancy them, the strangest 
monsters ; and all this, not as the alleviation 
of despair, but as the courtship of hope. And 
when he was at length betrayed to flatter 
himself that such a probation, through every 
kind of patience and danger, might entitle him 
to throw his trophies and himself at her impe- 
rial feet, it was very possible she might be 
affronted at his having presumed to be still 



198 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

alive. It is unnecessary to refer to the other 
parts of the institution of chivalry, the whole 
system of which would seem more adapted 
to any race of heings exhibited in the Arabian 
Nights, or to any still wilder creation of fancy, 
than to a community of creatures appointed 
to live by cultivating the soil, anxious to avoid 
pain and trouble, seeking the reciprocation of 
affection on the easiest terms, and nearest to 
happiness in regular pursuits and quiet do- 
mestic life. 

One cannot help reflecting here, how amaz- 
ingly accommodating this human nature has 
been to all institutions but wise and good 
ones ; insomuch that an order of life and 
manners, conceived in the wildest deviation 
from all plain sense and native instinct, could 
be practically adopted, by some of those who 
had rank and courage enough, and adored 
and envied by the rest of mankind. Still, the 
genuine tendencies of nature have survived 
the strange but transient sophistications of 
time, and remain the same after the age of 
chivalry is gone far toward that oblivion, to 
which you will not fail to wish that many 
other institutions might speedily follow it. 
Forgive the prolixity of these illustrations 
intended to show, that schemes and specu- 
lations respecting the interests either of an 
individual or of society, which are incon- 
sistent with the natural constitution of man, 






THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 199 

may, except where it should be reasonable to 
expect some supernatural intervention, be de- 
nominated romantic. 

The tendency to this species of romance, 
may be caused, or very greatly promoted, by 
an exclusive taste for what is grand, a disease 
with which some few minds are affected. They 
have no pleasure in contemplating the system 
of things as the Creator has ordered it, a 
combination of great and little, in which the 
great is much more dependent on the little, 
than the little on the great. They cut out 
the grand objects, to dispose them into a 
world of their own. All the images in their 
intellectual scene must be colossal and moun- 
tainous. They are constantly seeking what 
is animated into heroics, what is expanded 
into immensity, what is elevated above the 
stars. But for great empires, great battles, 
great enterprises, great convulsions, great ge- 
niuses, great temples, great rivers, there would 
be nothing worth naming in this part of the 
creation.* All that belongs to connexion, 
gradation, harmony, regularity, and utility, 
is thrown out of sight behind these forms of 
vastness. The influence of this exclusive taste 

* Just as, to employ a humble comparison, a votary of 
fashion, after visiting a crowded public place which hap- 
pened at that time not to be graced by the presence of many 
people of consequence, tells you, with an affected tone, 
" There was not a creature there." 



200 



ON THE APPLICATION OF 



will reach into the system of projects and ex- 
pectations. The man will wish to summon 
the world to throw aside its tame accustomed 
pursuits, and adopt at once more magnificent 
views and objects, and will be indignant at 
mankind that they cannot or will not be 
sublime. Impatient of little means and slow 
processes, he will wish for violent transitions 
and entirely new institutions. He will perhaps 
determine to set men the example of perform- 
ing something great, in some ill-judged san- 
guine project in which he will fail; and, after 
being ridiculed by society, both for the scheme 
and its catastrophe, may probably abandon all 
the activities of life, and become a misanthrope 
the rest of his days. At any rate, he will dis- 
dain all labour to perform well in little or 
moderate things, when fate has frowned on 
his higher ambition. 



LETTER III. 

One of the most obvious distinctions of the 
works of romance is, an utter violation of all 
* the relations between ends and means. Some- 
times such ends are proposed as seem quite 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 201 

dissevered from means, inasmuch as there are 
scarcely any supposable means on earth to 
accomplish them : but no matter ; if we cannot 
ride we must swim, if we cannot swim we 
must fly; the object is effected by a mere 
poetical omnipotence that wills it. And very 
often practicable objects are attained by means 
the most fantastic, improbable, or inadequate ; 
so that there is scarcely any resemblance be- 
tween the method in which they are accom- 
plished by the dexterity of fiction, and that 
which we are condemned to follow if we will 
attempt the same things in the actual eco- 
nomy of the world. Now, when you see this 
absurdity of imagination prevailing in the cal- 
culations of real life, you may justly apply the 
epithet — romantic. 

Indeed a strong and habitually indulged 
imagination may be absorbed in the end, 
if it be not a concern of absolute immediate 
urgency, as for a while quite to forget the 
process of attainment. That power has in- 
cantations to dissolve the rigid laws of time 
and distance, and place a man in something 
so like the presence of his object, as to create 
the temporary hallucination of an ideal pos- 
session; and it is hard, when occupying the 
verge of Paradise, to be flung far back in order 
to find or make a path to it, with the slow 
and toilsome steps of reality. In the luxury 
of promising himself that what he wishes will 



202 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

by some means take place at some time, he 
forgets that he is advancing no nearer to it — 
except on the wise and patient calculation 
that he must, by the simple fact of growing 
older, be coming somewhat nearer to every 
event that is yet to happen to him. He is 
like a traveller, who, amidst his indolent 
musings in some soft bower, where he has sat 
down to be shaded a little while from the 
rays of noon, falls asleep, and dreams he is 
in the midst of all the endearments of home, 
insensible that there are many hills and dales 
for him yet to traverse. But the traveller will 
awake ; so too will our other dreamer ; and if 
he has the smallest capacity of just reflection 
he will regret to have wasted in reveries the 
time which ought to have been devoted to 
practical exertions. 

But even though reminded of the necessity 
of intervening means, the man of imagination 
will often be tempted to violate their relation 
with ends, by permitting himself to dwell on 
those happy casualties, which the prolific sor- 
cery of his mind will promptly figure to him as 
the very things, if they would but occur, to 
accomplish his wishes at once, without the toil 
of a sober process. If they would occur — and 
things as strange might and do happen : he 
reads in the newspapers that an estate of ten 
thousand per annum was lately adjudged to a 
man who was working on the road. He has 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 203 

even heard of people dreaming that in such a 
place something valuable was concealed ; and 
that, on searching or digging that place, they 
found an old earthen pot, full of gold and silver 
pieces of the times of good King Charles the 
Martyr. Mr. B. was travelling by the mail- 
coach, in which he met with a most interesting 
young lady, whom he had never seen before ; 
they were mutually delighted, and were married 
in a few weeks. Mr. C, a man of great merit 
in obscurity, was walking across a field when 
Lord D., in chase of a fox, leaped over the 
hedge, and fell off his horse into a ditch. Mr. 
C. with the utmost alacrity and kind solicitude 
helped his lordship out of the ditch, and reco- 
vered for him his escaped horse. The conse- 
quence was inevitable ; his lordship, superior to 
the pride of being mortified to have been seen 
in a condition so unlucky for giving the im- 
pression of nobility, commenced a friendship 
with Mr. C. and introduced him into honourable 
society and the road to fortune. A very ancient 
maiden lady of a large fortune happening to be 
embarrassed in a crowd, a young clergyman 
offered her his arm, and politely attended her 
home ; this attention so captivated her, that she 
bequeathed and soon after left him her whole 
estate — though she had many poor relations. 

That class of fictitious works called novels, 
though much more like real life than the ro- 
mances which preceded, is yet full of these 



204 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

lucky incidents and adventures, which are intro- 
duced as the chief means toward the ultimate 
success. A young man, without fortune, for 
instance, is precluded from making his addresses 
to a young female in a superior situation, whom 
he believes not indifferent to him, until he can 
approach her with such worldly advantages as it 
might not be imprudent or degrading for her to 
cast a look upon. Now how is this to be ac- 
complished ? — Why, I suppose, by the exertion 
of his talents in some practicable and respectable 
department ; and perhaps the lady, besides, will 
generously and spontaneously condescend to 
abdicate, from partiality to him, some of the 
trappings and luxuries of rank. You really 
suppose this is the plan? I am sorry you have 
so much less genius than a novel-writer. This 
young man has an uncle, who has been absent 
many years, nobody knew where, except the 
young man's lucky stars. During his absence, 
the old uncle has made a large fortune, with 
which he returns to his native land, at a time 
most opportune for every one but a highway- 
man, who, attacking him in a road through a 
wood, is frightened away by the young hero, 
who happens to come there at the instant, to 
rescue and recognise his uncle, and to be in 
return recognised and made the heir to as many 
thousands as the lady or her family could wish. 
Now what is the intended impression of all this 
on the reader's mind ? What if he certainly 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 205 

have no uncle in any foreign fortune-making 
country ? But there are rich old gentlemen 
who are uncles to nobody. Is our novel-reader 
to reckon on it as a likely and a desirable 
chance, that one of these, just after returning 
from the Indies with a ship-load of wealth, shall 
be set upon by a highwayman ; and to take it 
for certain that in that case he, the novel-reader, 
shall have the luck to come to the very spot 
in the nick of time, to send the dastard robber 
galloping off, to make an instant and entire 
seizure of the old gentleman's affections, find 
himself constrained to go and take a present 
share of the opulence, and the heirship of the 
whole, and have his patron to join his pleading 
that Amelia, or Alicia, or Cecilia, (as the case 
may be,) may now be willing and be permitted 
to favour his addresses ? One's indignation is 
excited at the immoral tendency of such lessons 
to young readers, who are thus taught to under- 
value and reject all sober regular plans for com- 
passing an object, and to muse on improbabilities 
till they become foolish enough to expect them ; 
thus betrayed, as an inevitable consequence, 
into one folly more, that of being melancholy 
when they find they may expect them in vain. 
It is unpardonable that these pretended in- 
structors by example should thus explode the 
calculations and exertions of manly resolution, 
destroy the connexion between ends and means, 
and make the rewards of virtue so dependent on 



206 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

chance, that if the reader does not either regard 
the whole fable with contempt, or promise him- 
self he shall receive the favours of fortune in 
some similar way, he must close the book with 
the conviction that he may hang or drown him- 
self as soon as he pleases ; that is to say, unless 
he has learnt from some other source a better 
morality and religion than these books will ever 
teach him. 

Another deception in respect to means, is the 
facility with which fancy passes along the train 
of them, and reckons to their ultimate effect at 
a glance, without resting at the successive 
stages, and considering the labours and hazards 
of the protracted slow process from each point 
to the next. If a given number of years are 
allowed requisite for the accomplishment of an 
object, the romantic mind vaults from one last 
day of December to another, and seizes at once 
the whole product of all the intermediate days, 
without condescending to recollect that the sun 
never shone yet on three hundred and sixty-five 
days at once, and that they must be slowly told 
and laboured one by one. If a favourite plan is 
to be accomplished by means of a certain large 
amount of property, which is to be produced 
from what is at present a very small one, the 
calculations of a sanguine mind can change shil- 
lings into guineas, and guineas into hundreds 
of pounds, a thousand times faster than, in the 
actual experiment, those lazy shillings and 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 207 

guineas can be compelled to mount to these 
higher denominations of value. You remember 
the noble calculation of Alnaschar on his basket 
of earthenware, which was so soon to obtain 
him the Sultan's daughter. 

Where imagination is not delusive enough to 
embody future casualties as effective means, it 
may yet represent very inadequate means as 
competent. In a well-balanced mind, no con- 
ception will grow into a favourite purpose, 
unaccompanied by a process of the judgment, 
deciding its practicability by an estimate of 
the means ; in a mind under the ascendency 
of imagination this is a subordinate after-task. 
By the time that this comes to be considered, 
the projector is too much enamoured of an end 
that is deemed to be great, to abandon it be- 
cause the means are suspected to be little. But 
then they must cease to appear little ; for there 
must be an apparent proportion between the 
means and the end. Well, trust the whole 
concern to the plastic faculty, and presently 
every insignificant particle of instrumentality, 
and every petty contrivance for its management, 
will swell into magnitude ; pigmies and Lilli- 
putians with their tiny arrows will soon grow 
up into giants wielding spears ; and the diffi- 
dent consciousness which was at first somewhat 
afraid to measure the plan, as to its means of 
execution, against the object, will give place to 
a generous scorn of the timidity of doubting. 



208 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

The mind will most ingeniously place the appa- 
ratus between its eye and the object at a 
distance, and be deluded by the false position 
which makes the one look as large as the 
other. 

The consideration of the deceptive calcula- 
tions on the effect of insufficient means, would 
lead to a wide variety of particulars ; I will 
only touch slightly on a few. Various projects 
of a benevolent order would come under this 
charge. Did you ever listen to the discussion 
of plans for the civilization of barbarous nations 
without the intervention of conquest ? I have, 
with the most sceptical kind of interest.* That 
very many millions of the species should form 
only a brutal adjunct to civilized and enlightened 
man, is a disastrous thing, notwithstanding the 
whimsical attempts of some ingenious men to 
represent the state of roving savages as prefer- 
able to every other condition of life ; a state 
for which, no doubt, they would have been 
willing, if they could have the requisite physical 
seasoning for it, to abandon their fame and 
proud refinements. But where are the means 
to reclaim these wretched beings into the civi- 
lized family of man ? A few examples indeed 
are found in history, of barbarous tribes being 
formed into well-ordered and considerably 



* I here place out of view that religion by which Omnipo- 
tence will at length transform the world. 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 209 

enlightened states by one man, who began the 
attempt without any power but that of persua- 
sion, and perhaps delusion. There are other 
instances, of the success obtained by a small 
combination of men employing the same means ; 
as in the great undertaking of the Jesuits in 
South America. But have not these moral 
phenomena been far too few to be made a 
standard for the speculations of sober men ? 
And have they not also come to us with too 
little explanation to illustrate any general prin- 
ciples ? To me it appears extremely difficult 
to comprehend how the means, recorded by 
historians to have been employed by some of 
the unarmed civilizers, could have produced so 
great an effect. In observing the half-civilized 
condition of a large part of the population of 
these more improved countries, and in reading 
what travellers describe of the state and dispo- 
sitions of the various orders of savages, it would 
seem a presumption unwarranted by any thing 
we ever saw of the powers of the human mind 
to suppose that any man, or any ten men now 
on earth, if landed and left on a savage coast, 
would be able to transform a number of stupid 
or ferocious tribes into a community of mild 
intelligence and regular industry. We are 
therefore led to believe that the few unaccount- 
able instances conspicuous in the history of the 
world, of the success of one or a few men in 
this work, must have been the result of such a 



210 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

combination of favourable circumstances, co- 
operating with their genius and perseverance, 
as no other man can hope to experience. Such 
events seem like Joshua's arresting the sun and 
moon, things that have been done, but can be 
done no more. Pray, which of you, I should 
say, could expect to imitate with success, if 
indeed he could think it right to try, the de- 
ception of Manco Capac, and awe a wild multi- 
tude into order by something analogous to a 
pretended commission from the sun ? What 
would be your first expedient in the attempt 
to substitute that regularity and constraint 
which they hate, for that lawless liberty which 
they love ? How could you reduce them to 
be conscious, or incite them to be proud, of 
those wants, for being subject to which they 
would regard you as their inferiors ; wants of 
which, unless they could comprehend the re- 
finement, they must necessarily despise the 
debility ? By what magic are you to render 
visible and palpable any part of the world of 
science or of abstraction, to beings who have 
hardly words to denominate even their sensa- 
tions ? And by what concentrated force of all 
kinds of magic together, that Egypt or Chaldea 
ever pretended, are you to introduce humanity 
and refinement among such creatures as the 
Northern Indians, described by Mr. Hearne ? 
If an animated young philanthropist still zea- 
lously maintained that it might be done, I 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 211 

should be amused to think how that warm ima- 
gination would be quelled,, if he were obliged to 
make the experiment. It is easy for him to be 
romantic while enlivened by the intercourse of 
cultivated society, while reading of the contri- 
vances and the patience of ancient legislators, 
or while infected with the enthusiasm of poetry. 
He feels as if he could be the moral conqueror 
of a continent. He becomes a Hercules amidst 
imaginary labours ; he traverses untired, while 
in his room, wide tracts of the wilderness ; he 
surrounds himself with savage men, without 
either trembling or revolting at their aspects 
or fierce exclamations, or the proudly exhibited 
and vaunted trophies of their sanguinary ex- 
ploits ; he makes eloquent speeches to them, 
not knowing a word of their language, which 
language, if he did know it, he would find a 
wretched vehicle for the humblest of his mean- 
ings ; they listen with the deepest attention, 
are convinced of the necessity of adopting 
new habits of life, and speedily soften into 
humanity and brighten into wisdom. But he 
would become sober enough, if compelled to 
travel half a thousand miles through the desert, 
or over the snow, with some of these subjects 
of his lectures and legislation ; to accompany 
them in a hunting excursion; to choose in a 
stormy night between exposure in the open air 
and the smoke and grossness of their cabins ; 
to observe the intellectual faculty narrowed 

p 2 



212 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

almost to a point, limited to a scanty number 
of the meanest class of ideas ; to find by re- 
peated experiments that his kind of ideas could 
neither reach their understanding nor excite 
their curiosity ; to see the ravenous appetite 
of wolves succeeded for a season by a stupe- 
faction insensible even to the few interests 
which kindle the ardour of a savage ; to witness 
loathsome habits occasionally diversified by abo- 
minable ceremonies ; or to be for once the 
spectator of some of the circumstances attendant 
on the wars of savages. 

But there are many more familiar illustrations 
of the extravagant estimate of means. One is, 
the expectation of far too much from mere 
direct instruction. This is indeed so general, 
that it will hardly be denominated romantic, 
except in the most excessive instances. Ob- 
serve it, however, a moment in the concern 
of education. Nothing seems more evident 
than the influence of external circumstances, 
distinct from the regular discipline of the parent 
or tutor, in forming the character of youth. 
Nothing, again, seems more evident than that 
direct instruction, though an useful co-operator 
with the influence of these circumstances when 
they are auspicious, is a feeble counteractor if 
they be malignant. And yet this mere instruc- 
tion is enough, in the account of thousands of 
parents, to lead the youth to wisdom and hap- 
piness ; even that very youth whom the united 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 213 

influence of almost all things else which he is 
exposed to see, and hear, and participate, is 
drawing, with the unrelaxing grasp of a fiend, 
to destruction. 

A too sanguine opinion of the efficacy of 
instruction, has sometimes possessed those who 
teach from the pulpit. Till the dispensations 
of a better age shall be opened on the world, 
the measure of effect which may reasonably 
be expected from preaching, is to be determined 
by a view of the visible effects which are ac- 
tually produced on congregations from week to 
week ; and this view is far from flattering. 
One might appeal to preachers in general — 
What striking improvements are apparent in 
your societies? When you inculcate charity 
on the Sunday, do the misers in your congre- 
gations liberally open their chests and purses 
to the distressed on Monday ? Might I not 
ask as well, whether the stones and trees really 
did move at the voice of Orpheus ? After you 
have unveiled even the scenes of eternity to the 
gay and frivolous, do you find in more than 
some rare instances a dignified seriousness take 
place of their follies ? What is the effect, on 
the splendid, sumptuous, and fashionable pro- 
fessors of Christianity, of your inculcation (if 
indeed you venture it) of that solemn interdic- 
tion of their habits, " Be not conformed to 
this world ?" Yet, notwithstanding this melan- 
choly state of facts, some preachers, from the 



214 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

persuasion of a mysterious apostolic sacredness 
in the office, or from a vain estimate of their 
talents, or from mistaking the applause with 
which the preacher has been flattered, for the 
proof of a salutary effect on the minds of the 
hearers, or, in some instances, from a much 
worthier cause, the affecting influence of sacred 
truth on their own minds, have been inclined 
to anticipate striking effects from their public 
ministrations. Melancthon was a romantic 
youth when he began to preach. He expected 
that all must be inevitably and immediately 
persuaded, when they should hear what he had 
to tell them. But he soon discovered, as he 
said, that old Adam was too hard for young 
Melancthon. In addition to the grand fact 
of the depravity of the human heart, there are 
so many causes operating injuriously through 
the week on the characters of those who form 
a congregation, that a thoughtful man often 
feels an invading melancholy amidst his reli- 
gious addresses, from the reflection that he is 
making a feeble effort against a powerful evil, 
a single effort against a combination of evils, 
a temporary and transient effort against evils of 
almost continual operation, and a purely intel- 
lectual effort against evils, many of which act 
on the senses. When the preacher considers 
the effect naturally resulting from the sight of 
so many bad examples, the communications 
of so many injurious acquaintance, the hearing 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 215 

and talking of what would be, if written, so 
many volumes of vanity and nonsense, the 
predominance of fashionable dissipation in a 
higher class, and of a coarser corruption in a 
lower ; he must indeed imagine himself endowed 
with a super-human power of eloquence, if the 
instructions expressed in an hour or two on the 
sabbath, and soon, as he might know, forgotten 
by most of his hearers, are to leave in the mind 
something which shall be, through the week, 
the efficacious repellant to the contact and 
contamination of all these forces of mischief. 
But how soon he would cease to imagine such 
an efficacy in his exhortations,, if the greater 
number of his hearers could sincerely and ac- 
curately tell him, toward the end of the week, 
in what degree these admonitions had affected 
and governed them, in opposition to their cor- 
rupt tendencies, their habits, and their tempta- 
tions. What would be in the five or six days, 
the number of the moments and the instances 
in which these instructions would be proved to 
have been effectual, compared with the whole 
number of moments and circumstances to which 
they were applicable by appropriateness of 
instruction and warning? How often, while 
hearing such a week's detail of the lives of a 
considerable proportion of a congregation, a 
man would have occasion to say, By whose 
instructions were these persons influenced then, 
in that neglect of devout exercises, that excess 



216 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

of levity, that waste of time, that avowed con 
tempt of religion, that language of profaneness 
and imprecation, those contrivances of selfish- 
ness, those paroxysms of passion, that study 
of sensuality, or that habitual general obduracy 
in evil ? 

But the preacher to whose sanguine tempera- 
ment I am reluctantly applying these cooling 
suggestions, may tell me, that it is not by means 
of any force which he can throw into his reli- 
gious instructions, that he expects them to be 
efficacious ; but that he believes a divine energy 
will accompany what is undoubtedly a message 
from heaven. I am pleased with the piety, and 
the sound judgment, (as I esteem it,) with which 
he expects the conversion of careless or har- 
dened men from nothing less than an operation 
strictly considered as of divine power. But I 
would remind him, that the probability, at any 
given season, that such a power will intervene, 
must be in proportion to the frequency or infre- 
quency with which its intervention is actually 
manifested in the general course of experience; 
that is, in proportion to the number of happy 
transformations of character which we see taking 
place under the efficacy of religious truth. He 
must admit this to be substantially the rule : if 
he require that it be modified by the considera- 
tion of promises and signs from the Supreme 
Power of the near approach of an augmented 
divine interference for the efficacy of religion, I 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 217 

shall willingly admit what I can of such a reason 
for conceding such a modification. 

Reformers in general are very apt to over- 
rate the power of the means by which their 
theories are to be realized. They are for ever 
introducing the story of Archimedes, who was 
to have moved the world if he could have found 
any second place on which to plant his engines ; 
and imagination discloses to moral and political 
projectors a cloud-built and truly extramundane 
position, which they deem to be exactly such 
a convenience in their department, as the 
mathematician, whose converse with demon- 
strations had saved part of his reason from 
being run away with by his fancy, confessed to 
be a desideratum in his. This terra firma is 
named the Omnipotence of Truth. 

It is presumed, that truth must at length, 
through the indefatigable exertions of intellect, 
become generally victorious ; and that all vice, 
being the result of a mistaken judgment of the 
nature or the means of happiness, must therefore 
accompany the exit of error. By the same rule 
it is presumed of the present times also, or at 
least of those immediately approaching, that in 
every society and every mind where truth is 
clearly admitted, the reforms which it dictates 
must substantially follow. I have the most con- 
fident faith that the prevalence of truth, making 
its progress by a far mightier agency than mere 
philosophic inquiry, is appointed to irradiate the 



218 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

latter ages of a dark and troubled world ; and, 
on the strength of prophetic intimations, I anti- 
cipate its coming sooner, by at least a thousand 
ages, than a disciple of that philosophy which 
rejects revelation, as the first proud step toward 
the improvement of the world, is warranted, by 
a view of the past and present state of mankind, 
to predict. The assurance from the same 
oracle is the authority for believing that when 
truth shall have acquired the universal dominion 
over the understanding, it will evince a still 
nobler power in the general effect of conforming 
the heart and the life to its laws. But in the 
present state of the moral system, our expecta- 
tions of the effect of truth on the far greater 
number of the persons who shall assent to its 
dictates, have no right to exceed such measures 
of probability as have been given by experience. 
It would be gratifying no doubt to believe, that 
the several powers in the human constitution 
are in such faithful combination, that to gain the 
judgment would be to secure the whole man. 
And if all history, and the memory of our own 
observation and experience, could be merged in 
Lethe, it might be believed — perhaps for two or 
three hours. How could an attentive observer 
or reflector believe it longer ? How long would 
it be that a keenly self-inspecting mind could 
detect no schism, none at all, between its con- 
victions and inclinations ? And as to others, 
is it not flagrantly evident that very many 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 219 

persons, with a most absolute conviction, by their 
own ingenuous avowal, that one certain course 
of action is virtue and happiness, and another, 
vice and misery, do yet habitually choose the 
latter ? It is not improbable that several mil- 
lions of human beings are at this very hour thus 
acting in violation of the laws of rectitude, while 
those laws are acknowledged by them, not only 
as impositions of moral authority, but as vital 
principles of their own true self-interest.* And 
do not even the best men confess a fierce dis- 
cord between the tendencies of their imperfectly 

* The criminal himself has the clearest consciousness that 
he violates the dictates of his judgment. How trifling is the 
subtilty which affects to shew that he does not violate them, 
by alleging, that every act of choice must be preceded by a 
determination of the judgment, and that therefore in choosing 
an evil, a man does at the time judge it to be on some 
account preferable, though he may know it to be wrong. It 
is not to be denied that the choice does imply such a con- 
clusion of the judgment. But this conclusion is made accord- 
ing to a narrow and subordinate scale of estimating good and 
evil, while the mind is conscious that, judging according 
to a larger scale, that is, the rightfully authoritative one, the 
opposite conclusion is true. It judges a thing better for 
immediate pleasure, which it knows to be worse for ultimate 
advantage. The criminal therefore may be correctly said 
to act according to his judgment, in choosing it for present 
pleasure. But since it is the great office of the judgment to 
decide what is wisest and best on the whole, the man may 
truly be said to act against his judgment, who acts in oppo- 
sition to the conclusion which it forms on this greater 
scale. 



220 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

renovated nature, and the dictates of that truth 
which they revere ? They say with St. Paul, 
" That which I do, I allow not ; for what I 
would, that I do not ; but what I hate, that I 
do ; to will is present with me, but how to per- 
form that which is good, I find not ; the good 
that I would, that I do not, and the evil which 
I would not, that I do." The serious self- 
observer recollects instances, (what a singularity 
of happiness if he cannot !) in which a tempta- 
tion, exactly addressed to his passions or his 
habits, has prevailed in spite of the sternest 
interdict of his judgment, pronounced at the 
very crisis. Perhaps the most awful sanctions 
by which the judgment can ever enforce its 
authority, were distinctly brought to his view at 
the same moment with its dictates. In the sub- 
sequent hour he had to reflect, that the ideas of 
God, a future account, a world of retribution, 
could not prevent him from violating his con- 
science. That he did not at the critical moment 
dwell deliberately on these remonstrant ideas, in 
order to give them effect on his will, is nothing 
against my argument. It is of the very essence 
of the fatal disorder, that the passions will not let 
the mind strongly fix on the preventive consi- 
derations. And what greater power than this 
could they need to defeat the power of truth ? 
If the passions can thus prevent the mind from 
strongly fixing on the most awful considerations 
when distinctly presented by truth in counter- 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 221 

action to temptation, they can destroy the 
efficacy of the truth which presents them. 
Truth can do no more than discriminate the 
good from the evil before us, enforce the in- 
ducements to choose right, and declare the 
consequences of our choice. "When this is in- 
efficacious, its power has failed. And no fact 
can be more evident than that preceptive truth, 
apprehended and acknowledged, often thus fails. 
Let even its teacher and advocate confess ho- 
nestly whether he have not had to deplore 
numberless times the deficient efficacy of his 
own clearest convictions. And if we survey 
mankind as under an experiment relative to this 
point, it will be found, in instances innumerable, 
that to have informed and convinced a man, 
may be but little toward emancipating him 
from the habits which he sincerely acknow- 
ledges to be wrong. There is then no such 
inviolable connexion as some men have sup- 
posed between the admission of truth, and 
consequent action. And therefore, most im- 
portant though it is that truth be exhibited and 
admitted, the expectations that presume its 
omnipotence, without extraordinary interven- 
tion, are romantic delusion. 

You will observe that in this case of trying 
the efficacy of the truth on others, I have sup- 
posed the great previous difficulty, of presenting 
it to the understanding so luminously as to 
impress irresistible conviction, to be already 



222 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

overcome ; though the experimental reformer 
will find this introductory work such an arduous 
undertaking, that he will be often tempted to 
abandon it as hopeless. 



LETTER IV. 



When the gloomy estimate of means and of 
plans for the amendment of mankind does not 
make an exception of the actual human admi- 
nistration of the religion of Christ, I am anxious 
not to seem to fail in justice to that religion, by 
which I believe that every improvement of a 
sublime order yet awaiting our race must be 
effected. I trust I do not fail ; since I keep in 
my mind a clear distinction between Christianity 
itself as a thing of divine origin and nature, and 
the administration of it by a system of merely 
human powers and means. These means are 
indeed of divine appointment, and to a certain 
extent are accompanied by a special divine 
agency. But how far this agency accompanies 
them is seen in the measure and limit of their 
success. Where that stands arrested, the fact 
itself is the proof that further than so the 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 223 

superior operation does not attend the human 
agents and means. There it stops, and leaves 
them to accomplish, if they can, what remains. 
What is it that remains ? If the general trans- 
formation of mankind into such persons as could 
be justly deemed true disciples of Christ, were 
regarded as the object of his religion, how mys- 
teriously small a part of that object has the 
divine agency ever yet been exerted to accom- 
plish ! And then, the awful and immense re- 
mainder evinces the inexpressible imbecility of 
the means, when left to be applied as a mere 
human administration. The manifestation of 
its incompetency is fearfully conspicuous in the 
vast majority, the numerous millions of Chris- 
tendom, and the millions of even our own 
country, on whom this religion has no direct 
influence. I need not observe what numbers 
of these latter have heard or read the evangelic 
declaration thousands of times, nor how very 
many of them are fortified in an insensibility, 
on which its most momentous announcements 
strike as harmless as the slenderest arrows 
on the shield of Ajax. Probably each religious 
teacher can recollect, besides his general expe- 
rience, very particular instances, in which he 
has set himself to exert the utmost force of his 
mind, in reasoning, illustration, and serious ap- 
peal, to impress some one important idea, on 
some one class of persons to whom it was most 
specifically applicable and needful ; and has 



224 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

perceived the plainest indications, both at the 
instant and immediately after, that it was an 
attempt of the same kind as that of demolishing 
a tower by assaulting it with pebbles. Nor do 
I need to observe how generally, if a momen- 
tary impression be made, it is forgotten the 
following hour. 

A man convinced of the truth and excellence 
of Christianity, yet entertaining a more flattering 
notion of the reason and moral dispositions of 
man than any doctrine of that religion agrees 
to, may be very reluctant to admit that there 
is such a fatal disproportion between the appa- 
ratus, if I may call it so, of the christian means 
as left to be actuated by mere human energy, 
and the object which is to be attempted. But 
how is he to help himself? Will he reject 
the method of conclusion from facts, in an 
affair where they so peculiarly constitute the 
evidence ? He cannot look at the world of 
facts and contradict the representation in the 
preceding paragraph, unless his imagination is 
so illusive as to interpose an absolute phantasm 
between his eyes and the obvious reality. He 
cannot affirm that there is not an immense num- 
ber of persons, even educated persons, receiving 
the christian declarations with indifference, or 
rejecting them with a carelessness partaking of 
contempt. The right means are applied, and 
with all the force that human effort can give 
them, but with a suspension, in these instances, 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 225 

of the divine agency, — and this is the effect! 
While the fact stands out so palpably to view, 
I listen with something of wonder, and some- 
thing of curiosity, when some professed believers 
and advocates of the gospel are avowing high 
anticipations of its progressive efficacy, chiefly 
or solely by means of the intrinsic force which 
it carries as a rational address to rational crea- 
tures. I cannot help inquiring what length of 
time is to be allowed for the experiment, which 
is to prove the adequacy of the means inde- 
pendently of special divine intervention. Nor 
can it be impertinent to ask what is, thus far, 
the state of the experiment and the success, 
among those who scout the idea of such a divine 
agency, as a dream of fanaticism. Might it 
not be prudent, to moderate the expressions of 
contempt for the persuasion which excites an 
importunity for extraordinary influence from 
the Almighty, till the success without it shall 
be greater ? The utmost arrogance of this con- 
tempt will venture no comparison between the 
respective success, in the conversion of vain and 
wicked men, of the christian means as adminis- 
tered by those who implore and rely upon this 
special agency of heaven, and by those who 
deny any such operation on the mind ; deny it 
in sense and substance, whatever accommo- 
dating phrases they may sometimes employ. 
Has there indeed been any success at all, in 
x that great business of conversion, to vindicate 

Q 



226 



ON THE APPLICATION OF 



the calculations of this latter class from the 
imputation of all the vainest folly that should be 
meant by the word Romantic ? 

But, when I introduced the mention of re- 
formers and their projects, I was not intending 
any reference to delusive presumptions of the 
operations of Christianity, but to those specu- 
lations and schemes for the amendment of man- 
kind which anticipate their effect independently 
of its assistance ; some of them perhaps silently 
coinciding with several of its principles, while 
others expressly disclaim them. Unless these 
schemes bring with them, like spirits from 
heaven, an intrinsic competence to the great 
operation, without requiring to be met or aided 
by forwardness in the nature of the Subject, it 
may be predicted they will turn to the mortifi- 
cation of their fond projectors. There is no 
avoiding the ungracious perception, in surveying 
the general character of the race, that, after 
some allowance for what is called natural affec- 
tion, and for compassionate sympathy, (an ex- 
cellent principle, but extremely limited and 
often capricious in its operation,) the main 
strength of human feelings consists in the love 
of sensual gratification, of trifling amusement, of 
distinction, of power, and of money. And by 
what suicidal inconsistency are these principles 
to lend their force to accomplish the schemes 
of pure reason and virtue, which, they will 
not fail to perceive, are plotting against 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 22? 

them?* And if they have far too perfect an 
instinct to be trepanned into such an employ- 
ment of their force, and yet are the prepon- 
derating agents in the human heart, what other 
active principles of it can the renovator of 
human character call to his effectual aid, against 
the evils which are accumulated and defended 
by what is at once the baser and the stronger 
part ? Whatever principles of a better kind 
there may be in the nature, they can hold but 
a feeble and inert existence under this predo- 
minance of the worse, and could make but a 
faint insurrection in favour of the invading 
virtue. The very worst of them may indeed 
seem to become its allies when it happens, as 
it occasionally will, that the course of action 
which reforming virtue enforces, falls in the 
same line in which some of these meaner prin- 
ciples can attain their own ends. Then, and so 
far, an unsound coincidence may take place, 
and the external effect of those principles may 
be clad in specious appearances of virtue ; but 
the moment that the reforming projector sum- 
mons their co-operation to a service in which 
they must desert their own object and their 

* I am here reminded of the Spanish story, of a village 
where the devil, having made the people excessively wicked, 
was punished by being compelled to assume the appearance 
and habit of a friar, and to preach so eloquently, in spite of 
his internal repugnance and rage, that the inhabitants were 
completely reformed. 

Q 2 



228 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

corrupt character, they will desert him. As 
long as he is condemned to depend, for the 
efficacy of his schemes, on the aid of so much 
pure propensity as he shall find in the corrupted 
subject, he will be nearly in the case of a man 
attempting to climb a tree by laying hold, first 
on this side, and then on that, of some rotten 
twig, which still breaks off in his hand, and lets 
him fall among the nettles. 

Look again to the state of facts. Collective 
man is human nature ; and the conduct of this 
assemblage, under the diversified experiments 
continually made on it, expresses its true cha- 
racter, and indicates what may be expected 
from it. Now then, to what principle in human 
nature, as thus illustrated by trial, could you 
with confidence appeal in favour of any of the 
great objects which a benevolent man desires 
to see accomplished ? If there were in it any 
one grand principle of goodness which an 
earnest call, and a great occasion, would raise 
into action, to assert or redeem the character 
of the species, one should think it would be 
what we call, incorrectly enough, Humanity. 
Consider then, in this nation for instance, which 
extols its own generous virtues to the sky, what 
lively and rational appeals have been made to 
the whole community, respecting the slave 
trade,* the condition of the poor, the immensity 

* Happily this topic of accusation is in a measure now- 
set aside : but it would have remained as immovable as the 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 22 

of cruelty perpetrated on brute animals, and the 
general, national, desperate complacency mani- 
fested for what is named honourable war, during 
a whole half century of lofty christian preten- 
sion, — appeals substantially in vain. And why 
in vain ? If humanity were a powerful prin- 
ciple in the nature of the community, they 
would not, in contempt of knowledge, expostu- 
lation, and spectacles of misery, persist in the 
most enormous violations of it. Why in vain ? 
but plainly because there is not enough of that 
virtue of humanity, even in what is deemed a 
highly cultivated state of the human nature, 
to answer to the importunate call. Or if this 
be not the cause, let the idolaters of human 
divinity call, like the worshippers of Baal, in a 
louder voice. Their success is likely to be the 
same ; they will obtain no extraordinary exer- 
tion of power, though they cry from morning 
till the setting sun. And meanwhile the ob- 
server, who foresees their disappointment, would 
think himself warranted, but for the melancholy 

continent of Africa, if the legislature had not been forced 
into a conviction that, on the whole, the slave trade was not 
advantageous in point of pecuniary interest. At least the 
guilt would so have remained upon the nation acting in its 
capacity of a state. — This note is added subsequently to the 
first edition. — It may be subjoined, in qualification of the 
reproach relative to the next article, — the condition of the 
poor, — that during a later period there has been an increase 
of the attention and exertion directed to that condition ; 
which has, nevertheless, become worse and worse. 



230 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

feeling that the nature in question is his own, 
to deride their expectations. — You know that a 
multitude of exemplifications might be added. 
And the thought of so many great and interest- 
ing objects, concerning the welfare of the human 
economy, as a sober appreciation of means, 
seems to place beyond the reach of the moral 
revolutionist,* will often, if he has a genuine 
benevolence, make him sad. He will repeat to 
himself, " How easy it is to conceive these ines- 
timable improvements, and how nobly they 
would exalt my species ; but how to work them 
into the actual condition of man ! — Are there 
somewhere in possibility," he will ask, "intel- 
lectual and moral engines mighty enough to 
perform the great process ? Where in darkness 
is the sacred repository in which they lie ? 
What Marratonf shall explore the unknown 
way to it? The man who would not as part 
of the price of the discovery, be glad to close 
up all the transatlantic mines, would deserve to 



* It is obvious that I am not supposing this moral revo- 
lutionist to be armed with any power but that of persuasion. 
If he were a monarch, and possessed virtue and talents equal 
to his power, the case would be materially different. Even 
then, he would accomplish but little compared with what he 
could imagine, and would desire ; yet, to all human ap- 
pearance, he might be the instrument of wonderfully changing 
the condition of society within his empire. If the soul of 
Alfred could return to the earth ! — 

t Spectator, No. 56* 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 231 

be immured as the last victim of those deadly 
caverns." 

But each projecting visionary thinks the dis- 
covery is made; and while surveying his own 
great magazine of expedients, consisting of For- 
tunatus's cap, the philosopher's stone, Aladdin's 
lamp, and other equally efficient articles, he is 
confident that the work may speedily be done. 
These powerful instruments of melioration per- 
haps lose their individual names under the 
general denomination of Philosophy, a term 
that would be venerable, if it could be rescued 
from the misfortune of being hackneyed into 
cant, and from serving the impiety which sub- 
stitutes human ability to divine power. But 
it is of little consequence what denomination 
the projectors assume to themselves or their 
schemes : it is by their fruits that we shall know 
them. Their work is before them ; the scene 
of moral disorder presents to them the plagues 
which they are to stop, the mountain which they 
are to remove, the torrent which they are 
to divert, the desert which they are to clothe 
in verdure and bloom. Let them make their 
experiment, and add each his page to the 
humiliating records in which experience con- 
temns the folly of elated imagination.* 

* In reading lately some part of a tolerably well-written 
book published a few years since, I came to the following 
passage, which though in connexion indeed with the subject 



232 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

All the speculations and schemes of the san- 
guine projectors of all ages, have left the world 

of elections, expresses the author's general opinion of the 
state of society, and of the means of exalting it to wisdom 
and virtue. " The bulk of the community begin to examine, 
to feel, to understand, their rights and duties. They only 
require the fostering care of the Philosopher to ripen them 
into complete rationality, and furnish them with the requi- 
sites of political and moral action." Here I paused in 
wondering mood. The fostering care of the Philosopher ! 
Why then is not the Philosopher about his business ? Why 
does he not go and indoctrinate a company of peasants in the 
intervals of a ploughing or a harvest day, when he will find 
them far more eager for his instructions than for drink ? Why 
does he not introduce himself among a circle of farmers, who 
cannot fail, as he enters, to be very judiciously discussing, 
with the aid of their punch and their pipes, the most refined 
questions respecting their rights and duties, and wanting but 
exactly his aid, instead of more punch and tobacco, to pos- 
sess themselves completely of the requisites of political and 
moral action ? The populace of a manufactory, is another 
most promising seminary, where all the moral and intellec- 
tual endowments are so nearly " ripe," that he will seem less 
to have the task of cultivating than the pleasure of reaping. 
Even among the company in the ale-house, though the Phi- 
losopher might at first be sorry, and might wonder, to per- 
ceive a slight merge of the moral part of the man in the 
sensual, and to find in so vociferous a mood that inquiring 
reason which, he had supposed, would be waiting for him 
with the silent anxious docility of a pupil of Pythagoras, 
yet he would find a most powerful predisposition to truth 
and virtue, and there would be every thing to hope from the 
accuracy of his logic, the comprehensiveness of his views, 
and the beauty of his moral sentiments. But perhaps it will 
be explained, that the Philosopher does not mean to visit all 






THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 233 

still a prey to infinite legions of vices and 
miseries, an immortal band, which has trampled 
in scorn on the monuments and the dust of the 
self-idolizing men who dreamed, each in his 
day, that they were born to chase these evils 
out of the earth. If these vain demigods of 
an hour, who trusted to change the world, and 
who perhaps wished to change it only to make 
it a temple to their fame, could be awaked 
from the unmarked graves into which they 
sunk, to look a little while round on the scene 
for some traces of the success of their projects, 
would they not be eager to retire again into 
the chambers of death, to hide the shame of 
their remembered presumption ? The wars 
and tyranny, the rancour, cruelty and revenge, 
together with all the other unnumbered vices 
and crimes with which the earth is still infested, 
are enough, if the whole mass could be brought 
within one section of the inhabited world, of 
the extent of a considerable kingdom, to con- 
stitute its whole population literally infernal, 
all but their being incarnate ; which last they 

these people in person ; but that having first secured the 
source of influence, having taken entire possession of princes, 
nobility, gentry, and clergy, which he, expects to do in a very 
short time, he will manage them like an electrical machine, 
to operate on the bulk of the community. Either way the 
achievement will be great and admirable ; the latter event 
seems to have been predicted in that sibylline sentence, 
" When the sky falls, we shall catch larks." 



234 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

would soon, through mutual destruction, cease 
to be. Hitherto the power of the radical cause 
of these many forms of evil, the corruption of 
the human heart, has sported with the weak- 
ness, or seduced the strength, of all human 
contrivances to subdue them. Nor are there 
as yet more than glimmering signs that we are 
commencing a better era, in which the means 
that have failed before, or the expedients of a 
new and more fortunate invention, are appointed 
to victory and triumph. The nature of man 
still " casts ominous conjecture on the whole 
success." While that is corrupt, it will pervert 
even the very schemes and operations by which 
the world should be improved, though their first 
principles were pure as heaven. The innate 
principle of evil, instead of indifferently letting 
them alone, to work what good they can, 
will put forth a stupendous force to compel 
them into subserviency ; so that revolutions, 
great discoveries, augmented science, and new 
forms of polity, shall become in effect what 
may be denominated the sublime mechanics of 
depravity. 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 235 



LETTER V. 

This view of moral and philosophical pro- 
jects, added to that of the limited exertion of 
energy which the Almighty has made to attend, 
as yet, the dispensation of true religion, and 
accompanied with the consideration of the impo- 
tence of human efforts to make that dispensa- 
tion efficacious where his will does not, forms 
a melancholy and awful contemplation. In the 
hours when it casts its gloom over the mind 
of the thoughtful observer, unless he can fully 
resign the condition of man to the infinite wis- 
dom and goodness of his Creator, he will feel 
an emotion of horror, as if standing on the 
verge of a hideous gulf, into which almost all 
the possibilities, and speculations, and efforts, 
and hopes, relating to the best improvements 
of mankind, are brought down by the torrent 
of ages, in a long abortive series, to be lost in 
final despair. 

To an atheist of enlarged sensibility, if there 
could be such a man, how dark and hideous, 
beyond all power of description, must be the 
long review and the undefinable prospect, of 
this triumph of evil, unaccompanied, as it must 



236 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

be presented to his thoughts, by any sublime 
process of intelligent power, converting, in some 
manner unknown to mortals, this evil into good, 
either during the course or in the result. A 
devout theist, when he becomes sad amidst 
his contemplations, recovers a submissive tran- 
quillity, by reverting to his assurance of such 
a wise and omnipotent sovereignty and agency. 
As a believer in revelation, he is consoled by 
the confidence both that this dark train of evils 
will ultimately issue in transcendent brightness, 
and that the evil itself in this world will at a 
future period almost cease. He is persuaded 
that the Great Spirit, who presides over this 
mysterious scene, has an energy of influence 
yet in reserve to beam forth on the earth, such 
as its inhabitants have never, except in a few 
momentary glimpses, beheld; and that when 
the predestined period is completed for his 
kingdom to come, he will command this chaos 
of turbulent and malignant elements to become 
transformed into a fair and happy moral world. 

And is it not strange, my dear friend, to 
observe how carefully some philosophers, who 
deplore the condition of the world, and profess 
to expect its melioration, keep their speculations 
clear of every idea of divine interposition ? 
No builders of houses or cities were ever more 
attentive to guard against the access of flood or 
fire. If He should but touch their prospective 
theories of improvement, they would renounce 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 237 

them,, as defiled and fit only for vulgar fana- 
ticism. Their system of Providence would be 
profaned by the intrusion of the Almighty. 
Man is to effect an apotheosis for himself, by the 
hopeful process of exhausting his corruptions. 
And should it take a long series of ages, vices, 
and woes, to reach this glorious attainment, 
patience may sustain itself the while by the 
thought that when it is realized, it will be 
burdened with no duty of religious gratitude. 
No time is too long to wait, no cost too deep 
to incur, for the triumph of proving that we 
have no need of a Divinity, regarded as pos- 
sessing that one attribute which makes it de- 
lightful to acknowledge such a Being, the 
benevolence that would make us happy. But 
even if this noble self-sufficiency cannot be 
realized, the independence of spirit which has 
laboured for it must not sink at last into piety. 
This afflicted world, " this poor terrestrial cita- 
del of man," is to lock its gates, and keep its 
miseries, rather than admit the degradation of 
receiving help from God. 

I wish it were not true that even men who 
firmly believe in the general doctrine of the 
divine government of the world, are often be- 
trayed into the impiety of attaching an exces- 
sive importance to human agency in its events. 
How easily a creature of their own species is 
transformed by a sympathetic pride into a God 
before them ! If what they deem the cause 



238 



ON THE APPLICATION OF 



of truth and justice, advances with a splendid 
front of distinguished names of legislators, or 
patriots, or martial heroes, it must then and 
must therefore triumph ; nothing can withstand 
such talents, accompanied by the zeal of so 
many faithful adherents. If these shining in- 
sects of fame are crushed, or sink into the 
despicable reptiles of corruption, alas, then, for 
the cause of truth and justice ! All this while, 
there is no due reference to the " Blessed and 
only Potentate." If, however, the foundations 
of their religious faith have not been shaken, 
and they possess any docility to the lessons of 
time, they will after a while be taught to with- 
draw their dependence and confidence from all 
subordinate agents, and habitually regard the 
Supreme Being as the sole possessor of real 
and absolute power. 

Perhaps it is not improbable, that the grand 
moral improvements of a future age may be 
accomplished in a manner that shall leave no- 
thing to man but humility and grateful ado- 
ration. His pride so obstinately ascribes to 
himself whatever good is effected on the globe, 
that perhaps the Deity will evince his own 
interposition, by events as evidently independent 
of the might of man as the rising of the sun. 
It may be that some of them may take place 
in a manner but little connected even with 
human operation. Or if the activity of men 
shall be employed as the means of producing 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 239 

all of them, there will probably be as palpable 
a disproportion between the instruments and 
the events, as there was between the rod of 
Moses and the amazing phenomena which 
followed when it was stretched forth. No 
Israelite was foolish enough to ascribe to the 
rod the power that divided the sea; nor will 
the witnesses of the moral wonders to come 
attribute them to man. " Not by might, nor 
by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of 
hosts." 

I hope these extended observations will not 
appear like an attempt to exhibit the whole 
stock of means, as destitute of all value, and 
the industrious application of them as a labour 
without reward. It is not to depreciate a thing, 
if, in the attempt to ascertain its real magnitude, 
it is proved to be little. It is no injustice to 
mechanical powers, to say that slender machines 
will not move rocks and massive timbers ; nor 
to chemical ones, to assert that though an 
earthquake may fling a promontory from its 
basis, the explosion of a canister of gunpowder 
will not. — Between moral forces also, and the 
objects to which they are to be applied, there 
are constituted measures of proportion ; and it 
would seem an obvious principle of good sense, 
that an estimate moderately correct of the value 
of each of our means according to those mea- 
sures, as far as they can be ascertained, should 
precede every application of them. Such an 



240 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

estimate has no place in a mind under the 
ascendency of imagination, which, therefore, 
by extravagantly magnifying the virtue of its 
means, inflates its projects with hopes which 
may justly be called romantic. The best cor- 
rective of such irrational expectation is an 
appeal to experience. There is an immense 
record of experiments, which will assign the 
force of almost all the engines, as worked by 
human hands, in the whole moral magazine. 
And if a man expects any one of them to 
produce a greater effect than ever before, it 
must be because the talents of him that repeats 
the trial are believed to transcend those of all 
former experimenters, or else because the sea- 
son appears more auspicious. 

The estimate of the power of means, which 
comes in answer to the appeal to experience, 
is indeed most humiliating ; but what then ? 
It is a humble thing to be a man. The feeble- 
ness of means is, in fact, the feebleness of 
him that employs them ; for instruments to all 
human apprehension the most inconsiderable, 
can produce the most prodigious effects when 
wielded by celestial powers. Till, then, the 
time shall arrive for us to attain a nobler rank 
of existence, we must be content to work on 
the present level of our nature, and effect that 
little which we can effect ; unless it be greater 
magnanimity and piety to resolve that because 
our powers are limited to do only little things, 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 241 

they shall therefore, as if in revenge for such 
an economy, do nothing. Our means will do 
something ; that something is what they were 
meant to be adequate to in our hands, and not 
some indefinitely greater effect, which we may 
all be tempted to wish, and which a sanguine 
visionary confidently expects. 

This disproportion between the powers and 
means with which mortals are confined to work, 
and the great objects which good men would 
desire to accomplish, is a part of the ap- 
pointments of Him w r ho determined all the 
relations in the universe ; and he will see to the 
consequences. For the present, he seems to 
say to his servants, " Forbear to inquire why so 
small a part of those objects to which I have 
summoned your activity, is placed within the 
reach of your powers. Your feeble ability for 
action is not accompanied by such a capacity of 
understanding, as would be requisite to com- 
prehend why that ability was made no greater. 
Though it had been made incomparably greater, 
would there not still have been objects before 
it too vast for its operation ? Must not the 
highest of created beings still have something in 
view, which they feel they can but partially ac- 
complish till the sphere of their active force be 
enlarged ? Must there not be an end of im- 
provement in my creation, if the powers of my 
creatures had become perfectly equal to the 
magnitude of their designs ? How mean must 

R 



242 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

be the spirit of that being that would not make 
'an effort now, toward the accomplishment of 
something higher than he will be able to ac- 
complish till hereafter. Because mightier la- 
bourers would have been requisite to effect all 
that you wish, will you murmur that I have 
honoured you, the inferior ones, with the ap- 
pointment of making a noble exertion with 
however limited success ? If there is but little 
power in your hands, is it not because I retain 
the power in mine? Are you afraid lest that 
power should fail to do all things right, only 
because you are so little made its instruments ? 
Be grateful that all the work is not to be 
done without you, and that God employs you 
in that in which he also is employed. But 
remember, that while the employment is yours, 
the success is altogether his ; and that your 
diligence therefore, and not the measure of 
effect which it produces, will be the test of your 
characters. Good men have been employed 
in all ages under the same economy of inade- 
quate means, and what appeared to them in- 
considerable success. Go to your labours : every 
sincere effort will infallibly be one step more 
in your own progress to a perfect state ; and as 
to the Cause, when / see it necessary for a God 
to interpose in his own manner, I will come." 

I might deem a train of observations of the 
melancholy hue which shades some of the 
latter pages of this essay of too depressive a 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 243 

tendency, were I not convinced that a serious 
exhibition of the feebleness of human agency 
in relation to all great objects, may aggravate 
the impression, often so insufficient, of the 
absolute supremacy of God, of the total de- 
pendence of all mortal strength and effort on 
him, and of the necessity of maintaining ha- 
bitually a devout respect to his intervention. 
It might promote that last attainment of a 
zealously good man, the resignation to be as 
diminutive and as imperfectly successful an 
agent as God pleases. I am assured also that, 
in a pious mind, the humiliating estimate of 
means and human sufficiency, and the conse- 
quent sinking down of all lofty expectations 
founded on them, will leave one single mean, 
and that far the best of all, to be held not only 
of undiminished but of more eminent value 
than ever was ascribed to it before. The most 
excellent of all human means must be that of 
which the effect is to obtain the exertion of 
divine power. The means which are to be em- 
ployed in a direct immediate instrumentality 
toward the end, seem to bear such a measured 
proportion to their objects, as to assign and 
limit the probable effect. This regulated pro- 
portion exists no longer, and therefore the pos- 
sible effects become too great for calculation, 
when that expedient is solemnly employed, which 
is appointed as the mean of engaging the divine 
energy to act on the object. If the only means 

r 2 



244 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

by which Jehoshaphat sought to overcome his 
superior enemy, had been his troops, horses, 
and arms, there would have been nearly an 
assignable proportion between these means and 
the end, and the probable result of the conflict 
would have been a matter of ordinary calcu- 
lation. But when he said, " Neither know we 
what to do, but our eyes are up unto thee," he 
moved (if I may reverently express it so) 
another and an infinite force to invade the host 
of Moab and Aramon ; and the consequence 
displayed, in their camp, the difference between 
an irreligious leader, who could fight only with 
arms and on the level of the plain, and a 
pious one who could thus assault from Heaven. 
It may not, I own, be perfectly correct to cite, 
in illustration of the efficacy of prayer, the 
most memorable ancient examples. Nor is it 
needful, since the experience of devout and 
eminently rational men, in latter times, has 
supplied numerous striking instances of impor- 
tant advantages so connected in time and cir- 
cumstance with prayer, that with good reason 
they regarded them as the evident result of it.* 
This experience, taken in confirmation of the 
assurances of the Bible, warrants ample ex- 
pectations of the efficacy of an earnest and 
habitual devotion ; provided still, as I need not 

* Here I shall not be misunderstood to believe the mul- 
titude of stories which have been told by deluded fancy, or 
detestable imposture. 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 245 

remind you, that this mean be employed as the 
grand auxiliary of the other means, and not 
alone, till all the rest are exhausted or imprac- 
ticable. And no doubt any man who should, 
amidst his serious projects, become sensible, 
with any thing approaching to an adequate 
apprehension, of his dependence on God, would 
far more earnestly and constantly press on this 
great resource than is common even among 
good men. He would as little, without it, 
promise himself any distinguished success, as a 
mariner would expect to reach a distant coast 
by means of his sails spread in a stagnation 
of the air. — I have intimated my fear that it 
is visionary to expect an unusual success in 
the human administration of religion, unless 
there were unusual omens ; now an emphatical 
spirit of prayer would be such an omen; and 
the individual who should solemnly resolve to 
make proof of its last possible efficacy, might 
probably find himself becoming a much more 
prevailing agent of good in his little sphere. 
And if the whole, or the greater number, of the 
disciples of Christianity, were, with an earnest 
unfailing resolution of each, to combine that 
Heaven should not withhold one single influ- 
ence which the very utmost effort of conspiring 
and persevering supplication would obtain, it 
would be the sign of a revolution of the world 
being at hand. 

My dear friend, it is quite time to dismiss this 



246 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

whole subject ; though it will probably appear 
to you that I have entirely lost and forgotten 
the very purpose for which I took it up, which 
certainly was to examine the correctness of 
some not unusual applications of the epithet 
Romantic. It seemed necessary, first, to de- 
scribe, with some exemplifications, the cha- 
racteristics of that extravagance which ought 
to be given up to the charge. The attempt 
to do this, has led me into a length of detail 
far beyond all expectation. The intention was, 
next, to display and to vindicate, in an extended 
illustration, several schemes of life, and models 
of character ; but I will not prolong the subject. 
I shall only just specify, in concluding, two 
or three of those modes of feeling and action 
on which the censure of being romantic has 
improperly fallen. 

One is, a disposition to take high examples 
for imitation. I have condemned the extrava- 
gance which presumes on rivalling the career of 
action and success that has been the appoint- 
ment of some individuals, so extraordinary as to 
be the most conspicuous phenomena of history. 
But this delirium of ambitious presumption is 
distinguishable enough from the more tempe- 
rate, yet warm aspiration to attain some resem- 
blance to examples, which it will require the 
most strenuous and sustained exertion to re- 
semble. Away with any such sobriety and 
rationality as would repress the disposition to 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 247 

contemplate with a generous emulation the 
class of men who have been illustrious for 
their excellence and their wisdom ; to observe 
with interested self-reference the principles that 
animated them and the process of their attain- 
ments ; and to fix the standard of character 
high by keeping these exemplars in view. A 
man may, without a presumptuous estimate of 
his talents, or the expectation of passing through 
any course of unexampled events, indulge the 
ambition to resemble and follow, in the essen- 
tial determination of their characters, those 
sublime spirits who are now removed to the 
kingdom where they are to " shine as the stars 
for ever and ever," and those yet on earth 
who are evidently on their way to the same 
illustrious end. 

A striking departure from the order of cus- 
tom in the rank to which a man belongs, 
exhibited in his devoting the privileges of that 
rank to a mode of excellence which the gene- 
rality of the people who compose it never 
dreamed to be a duty, will by them be deno- 
minated and scouted as romantic. They will 
wonder why a man who ought to be like 
themselves, should affect quite a different style 
of life, a deserter and alien from the reign of 
fashion, should attempt unusual plans of doing 
good, and should put himself under some ex- 
traordinary discipline of virtue — while yet every 
point in his system may be a dictate of reason 



248 ON THE APPLICATION OF 

and conscience, speaking in a voice heard by 
him alone. 

The irreligious will apply this epithet to the 
determination to make, and the zeal to incul- 
cate, great exertions and sacrifices for a purely 
moral ideal reward. Some gross and palpable 
prize is requisite to excite their energies ; and 
therefore self-denial repaid by conscience, benefi- 
cence without fame, and the delight of resembling 
the Divinity, appear visionary felicities. 

The epithet will be in readiness for applica- 
tion to a man who feels it an imperious duty 
to realize, as far as possible, and as soon as 
possible, every thing which he approves and 
applauds in theory. You will often hear a 
circle of perhaps respectable persons agreeing 
entirely that this one thing spoken of is a 
worthy principle of action, and that other an 
estimable quality, and a third a sublime ex- 
cellence, who would be amazed at your fana- 
ticism, if you were to adjure them thus : " My 
friends, from this moment you are bound, from 
this moment we are all bound, on peril of the 
displeasure of God, to realize in ourselves, to 
the last possible extent, all that we have thus 
in good faith deliberately applauded." Through 
some fatal defect of conscience, there is a very 
general feeling, regarding the high order of 
moral and religious attainments, that though 
it is a happy exaltation to possess them, yet 
it is perfectly safe to stop contented where we 



THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 249 

are, on a far lower ground. One is confounded 
to hear irritable persons praising a character 
of self-command ; persons who trifle away their 
days professing to admire the instances of a 
strenuous improvement of time ; rich persons 
lavishing fine words on examples of benefi- 
cence which they know to be far surpassing 
themselves, though perhaps with no larger 
means ; and all expressing deep respect for the 
men who have been most eminent in piety ; — 
and yet all this apparently with the ease of a 
perfect freedom from any admonition of con- 
science, that they are themselves standing in the 
very serious predicament of having to choose, 
whether they will henceforward earnestly and 
practically aim at these higher attainments, or 
resign themselves to be found wanting in the 
day of final account. 

Finally, in the application of this epithet, but 
little allowance is generally made for the great 
difference between a man's entertaining high 
designs and hopes for himself alone, and his 
entertaining them relative to other persons. It 
might be very romantic for a man to reckon on 
effecting such designs with respect to others, as 
it may be reasonable to meditate for himself. If 
he feels the powerful habitual impulse of convic- 
tion, urging and animating him to the highest 
attainments of wisdom and excellence, he may 
perhaps justly hope to approach them himself, 
though it would be most extravagant to extend 



250 ON THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 

the same hope to all the persons to whom he 
may wish and try to impart the impulse. I 
specify the strictly personal attainments, wisdom 
and excellence, for the reason that, besides the 
difference, in probability of realization, between 
large schemes and hopes as indulged by a man 
for himself or entertained for others, there is 
a distinction to be made in respect to such 
as he might entertain only for himself. His 
extraordinary plans and expectations for himself 
might be of such a nature as to depend on 
other persons for their accomplishment, and 
might therefore be as extravagant as if other 
persons alone, persons in no degree at his 
command, had been their object. Or, on the 
contrary, they may be of a kind which shall not 
need the co-operation of other persons, and 
may be realized independently of their will. 
The design of acquiring immense riches, or 
becoming the commander of an army, or a 
person of high official importance in national 
affairs, must in its progress be dependent on 
other men in incalculably too many points and 
ways for a considerate man to presume that he 
shall be fortunate in them all. But the schemes 
of eminent personal improvements, depending 
comparatively little on the will, capacity, or con- 
duct, of other persons, are romantic only when 
there is some fatal intellectual or moral defect 
in the individual himself who has adopted them. 



ESSAY IV. 



ON SOME OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH EVANGELICAL 
RELIGION HAS BEEN RENDERED UNACCEPTABLE 
TO PERSONS OF CULTIVATED TASTE. 



LETTER I. 

MY DEAR FRIEND, 

It is striking to observe, under what various 
forms of character men are passing through this 
introductory season of their being, to enter on its 
future greater stage. Some one of these, it may 
be presumed, is more eligible than all the rest 
for proceeding to that greater stage ; and to as- 
certain which it is, must be felt by a wise man 
the most important of his inquiries. We, my 
friend, are persuaded that the inquiry, if made 
in good faith, will soon terminate, and that the 
christian character will be selected as the only 
one, in which it is wise to advance to the entrance 
on the endless futurity. Indeed the assurance 
of our permanent existence itself rests but on 
that authority which dictates also the right in- 
troduction to it. 



252 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

The christian character is simply a con- 
formity to the whole religion of Christ. This im- 
plies a cordial admission of that whole religion ; 
but it meets, on the contrary, in many minds 
not denying it to be a communication from God, 
a disposition to shrink from some of its peculiar 
properties and distinctions, or an effort to dis- 
place or neutralize them. I am not now to 
learn that the substantial cause of this is that 
repugnance in human nature to what is purely 
divine, which revelation affirms, and all history 
proves, and which perhaps some of the humi- 
liating points of the christian system are more 
adapted to provoke, than any other thing that 
bears the divine impress. Nor do I need to be 
told how much this chief cause has aided and 
aggravated the power of those subordinate ones, 
which may have conspired to prevent the suc- 
cess of evangelical religion among a class of 
persons that I have in view, I mean those of 
refined taste, whose feelings, concerning what is 
great and excellent, have been disciplined to 
accord to a literary or philosophical standard. 
But even had there been less of this natural 
aversion in such minds, or had there been none, 
some of the causes which have acted on them 
would have tended, necessarily, to produce an 
effect injurious to the claims of pure Christianity. 
— I wish to illustrate several of these causes, 
after briefly describing the antichristian feelings 
in which I have observed that effect. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 253 

It is true that many persons of taste have, 
without any formal disbelief of the christian 
truth, so little concern about religion in any 
shape, that the unthinking dislike to the evan- 
gelical principles, occasionally rising and passing 
among their transient moods of feeling, with no 
distinctness of apprehension, hardly deserves to 
be described. These are to be assigned, what- 
ever may be their faculties or improvements, to 
the multitude of triflers relatively to the gravest 
concerns, on whom we can pronounce only 
the general condemnation of irreligion, their 
feelings not being sufficiently marked for a more 
discriminative censure. But the aversion is of a 
more defined character, as it exists in a mind 
too serious for the follies of the world and the 
neglect of all religion, and in which the very 
sentiment itself becomes, at times, the subject of 
painful and apprehensive reflection, from an in- 
ternal monition that it is an unhappy symptom, 
if the truth should be that the religious system 
which excites the displacency, has really the 
sanction of divine revelation. If a person in this 
condition of mind disclosed himself to you, he 
would describe how the elevated sentiment, 
inspired by the contemplation of other sublime 
subjects, is confounded, and sinks mortified into 
the heart, when this new subject is presented to 
his view. It seems to require almost a total 
change of his mental habits to admit this as 
the most interesting subject of all, while yet he 



254 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

dares not reject the authority which supports 
its claim. The dignity of religion,, as a ge- 
neral and refined speculation, he may have 
long acknowledged ; but it appears to him 
as if it lost that aspect of dignity, in taking 
the specific form of the evangelical system ; 
just as if an ethereal being were reduced to 
combine his radiance and subtility with an 
earthly conformation. He is aware that reli- 
gion in the abstract, or in other words, the 
principles which constitute the obligatory rela- 
tion of all intelligent creatures to the Supreme 
Being, must receive a special modification, by 
means of the addition of some other principles, 
in order to become a peculiar religious economy 
for a particular race of those creatures, espe- 
cially for a race low in rank and corrupted 
in nature. And the christian revelation assigns 
the principles by which this religion in the 
abstract, the religion of the universe, is thus 
modified into the peculiar form required for 
the nature and condition of man. But when 
he contemplates some of these principles, 
framed on an assumption, and conveying a 
plain declaration, of an ignominious and de- 
plorable condition of our nature, he can hardly 
help regretting that, even if our condition be so 
degraded, the system of our relations with the 
Divinity, though constituted according and in 
adaptation to that degraded state, is not an 
economy of a brighter character. The gospel 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 255 

indeed appears to him like the image in Nebu- 
chadnezzar's dream ; it is refulgent with a head 
of gold ; the sublime truths or facts of religious 
theory, which stand antecedent and superior 
to every peculiarity of the special dispensations 
of religion, are luminously exhibited ; but the 
doctrines which are added as distinctive of the 
peculiar circumstances of the christian economy, 
appear less splendid, and as if descending to- 
wards the qualities of iron and clay. If he must 
admit this portion of the system as a part of the 
truth, his feelings amount to the wish that a 
different theory had been true. It is therefore 
with a degree of shrinking reluctance that he 
sometimes adverts to the ideas peculiar to the 
gospel. He would willingly lose this specific 
scheme of doctrines in a more general theory of 
religion, instead of resigning every wider specu- 
lation for this scheme, in which God has com- 
prised, and distinguished by a very peculiar 
character, all the religion which he wills to be 
known, or to be useful, to our world. It is not 
a welcome conviction, that the gospel, instead 
of being a modification of religion exhibited 
in competition with others, and subject to choice 
or rejection according to his taste, is peremp- 
torily and exclusively the religion for our lapsed 
race ; insomuch that he who has not a religion 
conformed to the model in the New Testament 
does not stand in the only right and safe rela- 
tion to the Supreme Being. He suffers himself 



256 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

to pass the year in a dissatisfied uncertainty, 
and a criminal neglect of deciding, whether 
his cold reception of the specific views of 
Christianity will render unavailing his regard 
for those more general truths, respecting the 
Deity, moral rectitude, and a future state, 
which are necessarily at the basis of the system. 
He is afraid to examine and determine the 
question, whether he may with impunity rest 
in a scheme composed of the general princi- 
ples of wisdom and virtue, selected from the 
christian oracles and the speculations of phi- 
losophy, harmonized by reason, and embellished 
by taste. If it were safe, he would much 
rather be the dignified professor of such a 
philosophic refinement on Christianity, than 
yield himself a submissive and wholly conformed 
disciple of Jesus Christ. This refined system 
would be clear of the undesirable peculiarities 
of christian doctrine, and it would also allow 
some different ideas of the nature of moral 
excellence. He would not be so explicitly 
condemned for indulging a disposition to ad- 
mire and imitate some of those models of cha- 
racter which, however opposite to pure christian 
excellence, the world has always idolized. 

I wish I could display, in the most forcible 
manner, the considerations which show how 
far such a state of mind is wrong. But my 
object is, to remark on a few of the causes 
which may have contributed to it. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 257 

I do not, for a moment, place among these 
causes that continual dishonour which the 
religion of Christ has suffered through the 
corrupted institutions, and the depraved cha- 
racter of individuals or communities, of what 
is called the christian world. Such a man as 
I have supposed, understands what the dictates 
and tendency of that religion really are, so far 
at least, that in contemplating the bigotry, 
persecution, hypocrisy, and worldly ambition, 
which have been forced as an opprobrious ad- 
junct on Christianity daring all ages of its 
occupancy on earth, his mind dissevers, by a 
decisive glance of thought, all these evils, and 
the pretended christians who are accountable 
for them, from the religion which is as distinct 
from them as the Spirit that pervades all things 
is pure from matter and from sin. In his view, 
these odious things and these wicked men, that 
have arrogated and defiled the christian name, 
sink out of sight through a chasm like Korah, 
Dathan, and Abiram, and leave the camp and 
the cause holy, though they leave the numbers 
small. It needs so very moderate a share of 
discernment, in a protestant country at least, 
where a well-known volume exhibits the religion 
itself, genuine and entire as it came from hea- 
ven, to perceive the essential disunion and 
antipathy between it and all these abominations, 
that to take them as congenial and inseparable, 
betrays, in every instance, a detestable want 

s 



258 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

of principle, or a most wretched want of sense. 
The defect of cordiality toward the religion 
of Christ, in the persons that I am accusing, 
does not arise from this debility or this injustice. 
They would not be less equitable to Chris- 
tianity than they would to some estimable man, 
whom they would not esteem the less because 
villains that hated him, knew, however, so well 
the excellence of his name and character, as 
gladly to avail themselves of them in any way 
they could to aid their schemes, or to shelter 
their crimes. — But indeed these remarks are 
not strictly to the purpose ; since the prejudice 
which a weak or corrupt mind receives from 
such a view of the christian history, operates, 
as we see by facts, not discriminatively against 
particular characteristics of Christianity, but 
against the whole system, and leads toward a 
denial of its divine origin. On the contrary, 
the class of persons now in question fully admit 
its divine authority, but feel a repugnance to 
some of its most peculiar distinctions. These 
peculiarities they may wish, as I have said, to 
refine away ; but in moments of impartial se- 
riousness, are constrained to admit something 
very near at least to the conviction, of their 
being inseparable from the sacred economy. 
This however fails to subdue or conciliate the 
heart ; and the dislike to some of the parts has 
often an influence on the affections in regard to 
the whole. That portion of the system which 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 259 

they think they could admire, is admitted with 
the coldness of a mere speculative assent, from 
the effect of the intruding recollection of its 
being combined with something else which they 
cannot admire. Those distinctions from which 
they recoil, are chiefly comprised in that view 
of Christianity which, among a large propor- 
tion of the professors of it, is denominated in 
a somewhat specific sense, Evangelical ; and 
therefore I have adopted this denomination 
in the title of this letter. Christianity taken in 
this view contains — a humiliating estimate of 
the moral condition of man, as a being radically 
corrupt — the doctrine of redemption from that 
condition by the merit and sufferings of Christ 
— the doctrine of a divine influence being ne- 
cessary to transform the character of the human 
mind, in order to prepare it for a higher station 
in the universe — and a grand moral peculiarity 
by which it insists on humility, penitence, and 
a separation from the spirit and habits of the 
world. — I do not see any necessity for a more 
formal and amplified description of that mode 
of understanding Christianity which has ac- 
quired the distinctive epithet Evangelical; and 
which is not, to say the least, more discrimi- 
natively designated among the scoffing part of 
the wits, critics, and theologians of the day, 
by the terms Fanatical, Calvinistical, Metho- 
distical. 

I may here notice that, though the greater 
s2 



260 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

share of the injurious influences on which I 
may remark operates more pointedly against 
the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, yet some 
of them are perniciously effectual against its 
moral sentiments and laws, which are of a 
ten our corresponding to the principles it pre- 
scribes to our faith. I would observe also, that 
though I have specified the more refined and 
intellectual class of minds, as indisposed to the 
religion of Christ by the causes on which I may 
comment, and though I keep them chiefly in 
view, yet the influence of some of these 
causes extends in a degree to many persons 
of subordinate mental rank. 



LETTER II. 



In the view of an intelligent and honest 
mind the religion of Christ stands as clear of 
all connexion with the corruption of men, and 
churches, and ages, as when it was first re- 
vealed. It retains its purity like Moses in 
Egypt, or Daniel in Babylon, or the Saviour 
of the world himself while he mingled with 
scribes and pharisees, or publicans and sin- 
ners. But though it thus instantly and totally 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 261 

separates itself from all appearance of relation 
to the vices of bad men, a degree of effort may 
be required in order to display it, or to view 
it in an equally perfect separation from the 
weakness of good ones. It is in reality no 
more identified with the one than with the 
other ; its essential sublimity is as incapable of 
being reduced to littleness, as its purity is of 
uniting with vice. But it may have a vital con- 
nexion with a weak mind, while it necessarily 
disowns a wicked one ; and the qualities of 
that mind with which it confessedly unites itself, 
will much more seem to adhere to it, than 
of that with which all its principles are plainly 
in antipathy. It will be more natural to take 
those persons who are acknowledged the real 
subjects of its influence, as illustrations of its 
nature, than those on whom it is the heaviest 
reproach that they pretend to be its friends. 
The perception of its nature and dignity must 
be clear and absolute, in the man who can 
observe it under the appearance it acquires in 
intimate combination with the thoughts, feel- 
ings, and language of its disciples, without ever 
losing sight of its own essential qualities and 
lustre. No possible associations indeed can 
diminish the grandeur of some parts of the 
christian system. The doctrine of immortality, 
for instance, cannot be reduced to take even 
a transient appearance of littleness, by the 
meanest or most uncouth words and images 



262 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

that shall ever be employed to represent it. 
But some other things in the system have 
not the same obvious philosophic dignity ; 
and these are capable of acquiring, from the 
mental defects of their believers, such associa- 
tions as will give a character much at variance 
with our ideas of magnificence, to so much 
as they constitute of the evangelical economy. 
One of the causes therefore which I meant to 
notice, as having excited in persons of taste 
a sentiment unfavourable to the reception of 
evangelical religion, is, that this is the religion 
of many weak and uncultivated minds. 

The schools of philosophy have been com- 
posed of men of superior faculties and exten- 
sive accomplishments, who could sustain, by 
eloquence and capacious thought, the dignity 
of the favourite themes ; so that the proud 
distinctions of the disciples and advocates ap- 
peared as the attributes of the doctrines. The 
adepts could attract refined and aspiring spirits 
by proclaiming, that the temple of their god- 
dess was not profaned by being a rendezvous 
for vulgar men. On the contrary, it is the 
beneficent distinction of the gospel, that though 
it is of a magnitude to interest and to surpass 
angelic investigation, (and therefore assuredly 
to pour contempt on the pride of human intel- 
ligence rejecting it for its meanness,) it is yet 
most expressly sent to the class which philo- 
sophers have always despised. And a good 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 263 

man feels it a cause of grateful joy, that 
a communication has come from heaven, 
adapted to effect the happiness of multitudes in 
spite of natural debility or neglected education. 
While he observes that confined capacities do 
not preclude the entrance, and the permanent 
residence, of that sacred combination of truth 
and power, which finds no place in the minds of 
many philosophers, and wits, and statesmen, he 
is grateful to him who has "hidden these things 
from the wise and prudent, and revealed them 
to babes." 

But it is not to be denied that the natural 
consequence follows. Contracted and obscured 
in its abode, the inhabitant will appear, as the 
sun through a misty sky, with but little of its 
magnificence, to a man who can be content 
to receive his impression of the intellectual 
character of the religion from the form of 
its manifestation made from the minds of its 
disciples; and, in doing so, can indolently and 
perversely allow himself to regard its weakest 
display as its truest image. In taking such a 
dwelling, the religion seems to imitate what 
was prophesied of its Author, that, when he 
should be seen, there would be no beauty 
that he should be desired. This humiliation 
is inevitable ; for unless miracles were wrought, 
to impart to the less intellectual disciples an 
enlarged power of thinking, the evangelic truth 
must accommodate itself to the dimensions and 



264 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

habitudes of their minds. And perhaps the 
exhibitions of it will come forth with more of 
the character of those minds, than of its own 
celestial distinctions : insomuch that if there 
were no declaration of the sacred system, but 
in the forms of conception and language in 
which they give it forth, even a candid man 
might hesitate to admit it as the most glorious 
gift of heaven. Happily, he finds its quality 
declared by other oracles ; but while from 
them he receives it in its own character, he is 
tempted to wish he could detach it from all 
the associations which he feels it has acquired 
from the humbler exhibition. And he does 
not greatly wonder that other men of the same 
intellectual habits, and with a less candid soli- 
citude to receive with simplicity every thing that 
really comes from God, should have admitted 
a prejudice from these associations. 

They would not make this impression on a 
man already devoted to the religion of Jesus 
Christ. No passion that has become predomi- 
nant is ever cooled by any thing which can 
be associated with its object, while that object 
itself continues unaltered. The passion is even 
willing to verify its power, and the merit of 
that which interests it, by sometimes letting 
the unpleasing associations surround and touch 
the object for an instant, and then chasing 
them away ; and it welcomes with augmented 
attachment that object coming forth from them 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 265 

unstained ; as happy spirits at the last day will 
receive with joy their bodies recovered from 
the dust in a state of purity that will leave 
every thing belonging to the dust behind. A 
zealous christian exults to feel in contempt of 
how many counteracting circumstances he can 
still love his religion ; and that this counter- 
action, by exciting his understanding to make 
a more defined estimate of its excellence, has 
resulted in his loving it the more. It has now 
in some degree even pre-occupied those avenues 
of taste and imagination, by which alone the 
ungracious effect of associations could have 
been admitted. The thing itself is close to his 
mind, and therefore the causes which would 
have misrepresented it by coming between, have 
lost their power. As he hears the sentiments 
of sincere Christianity from the weak and illite- 
rate, he says to himself — All this is indeed 
little, but I am happy to feel that the subject 
itself is great, and that this humble display of 
it cannot make it appear to me different from 
what I absolutely know it to be; any more 
than a clouded atmosphere can diminish my 
idea of the grandeur of the heavens, after I 
have so often beheld the pure azure, and the 
host of stars. I am glad that it has in this 
man all the consolatory and all the purifying 
efficacy, which I wish that my more elevated 
views of it may not fail to have in me. This is 
the chief end for which a divine communication 



266 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

can have been granted to the world. If this 
religion, instead of being designed to make its 
disciples pure and happy amidst their littleness, 
had required to receive lustre from their mental 
dignity, it would have been sent to none of us. 
At least, not to me; for though I would be 
grateful for my intellectual advantage over my 
uncultivated fellow-christian, I am conscious 
that the noblest forms of thought in which I 
apprehend, or could represent, the subject, do 
but contract its amplitude, do but depress its 
sublimity. Those superior spirits who are said 
to rejoice over the first proof of the efficacy of 
divine truth, have rejoiced over its introduction, 
even in so humble a form, into the mind of 
this man, and probably see in fact but little 
difference, in point of speculative greatness, 
between his manner of viewing and illustrating 
it and mine. If Jesus Christ could be on 
earth as before, he would receive this disciple, 
and benignantly approve, for its operation on 
the heart, that faith in his doctrines, which 
men of taste might be tempted to despise for 
its want of intellectual refinement. And since 
all his true disciples are destined to attain great- 
ness at length, the time is coming, when each 
pious, though now contracted mind, will do 
justice to this high subject. Meanwhile, such 
as this subject will appear to the intelligence 
of immortals, and such as it will be expressed 
in their eloquence, such it really is now ; and 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 267 

I should deplore the perversity of my mind,, if 
I felt more disposed to take the character of 
the religion from that style of its exhibition 
in which it appears humiliated,, than from that 
in which I am assured it will be sublime. If, 
while we are all advancing to meet the reve- 
lations of eternity, I have a more vivid and 
comprehensive idea than these less privileged 
christians, of the glory of our religion, as dis- 
played in the New Testament, and if I can 
much more delightfully participate the senti- 
ments which devout genius has uttered in the 
contemplation of it, I am therefore called upon 
to excel them as much in devotedness to this 
religion, as I have a more luminous view of 
its excellence. 

Let the spirit of the evangelical system once 
have- the ascendency, and it may thus defy the 
threatening mischief of disagreeable associations 
with its principles ; as the angels in the house 
-of Lot repelled the base assailants. But it 
requires a most extraordinary cogency of con- 
viction, and indeed more than simple intellec- 
tual conviction, to obtain a cordial reception 
for these principles, if such associations are 
in prepossession of the mind. And that they 
should be so in the man of taste, is not 
wonderful, if you consider how early, how often, 
and by what diversities of the same general 
cause, they may have been made on him. As 
the gospel comprises an ample assemblage of 



268 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

intellectual views, and as the greater number 
of christians are inevitably incapable of pre- 
senting them in a dignified character of con- 
ception and language, from the same causes 
which disqualify them to do such justice to 
other intellectual subjects, it is not improbable 
that far the greater number of expressions 
which he has heard in his whole life, have been 
utterly below the subject. Obviously this is a 
very serious circumstance ; for if he had heard 
as much spoken on any other subject of high 
intellectual rank, as moral philosophy, or poetry, 
or rhetoric, in which perhaps he now takes 
great interest, and if a similar proportion of 
what he had heard had been as much below 
the subject, it is probable that he and the 
subject would have remained strangers. And 
it is a melancholy deposition against the human 
heart, that fewer unfavourable associations will 
cause it to recoil from the gospel, than from 
any other subject which comes with high 
claims. 

The prejudicial influence of mental deficiency 
or meanness associated with evangelical doc- 
trine, may have beset him in many ways. 
For instance, he has met with some zealous 
christians, who not only were very slightly 
acquainted with the evidences of the truth, 
and the illustrations of the reasonableness, of 
their religion, but who actually felt no in- 
terest in the inquiry. Perhaps more than one 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 269 

individual attempted to deter him from pursuing 
it, by suggesting that inquiry either implies 
doubt, which was pronounced a criminal state 
of mind, or will probably lead to it, as a judg- 
ment on the profane inquisitiveness which, on 
such a subject, is not satisfied with implicitly 
believing. An attempt to examine the foun- 
dation would be likely to end in a wish to 
demolish the structure. 

He may sometimes have heard the discourse 
of sincere christians, whose religion involved 
no intellectual exercise, and, strictly speaking, 
no subject of intellect. Separately from their 
feelings, it had no definition, no topics, no 
distinct succession of views. And if he or 
some other person attempted to talk on some 
part of the religion itself, as a thing definable 
and important, independently of the feelings 
of any individual, and as consisting in a vast 
congeries of ideas, concerning the divine go- 
vernment of the world, the relations of rational 
creatures with the Creator, the general nature 
of the economy disclosed by the Messiah, the 
system of moral principles and rules, and the 
greatness of the future prospects of man, they 
seemed to have no concern in that religion, and 
impatiently interrupted such discourse with the 
observation — That is not experience. 

Others he has heard continually recurring to 
two or three points of opinion, adopted perhaps 
in servile addiction to a system, or perhaps by 



270 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

some chance seizure of the individual's pre- 
ference, and asserted to be the life and essence 
of Christianity. These opinions he has heard 
zealously though not argumentatively defended, 
even when they were not attacked or ques- 
tioned. If they were called in question, it was 
an evidence not less of depraved principle than 
of perverted judgment. All other religious 
truths were represented as deriving their au- 
thority and importance purely from these, and 
as being so wholly included and subordinate, 
that it is needless and almost impertinent to 
give them a distinct attention. The neglect 
of constantly repeating and enforcing these 
opinions was said to be the chief cause of the 
comparative failure of the efforts to promote 
Christianity in the world, and of the decay of 
particular religious societies. Though he per- 
haps could not perceive how these points were 
essential to Christianity, even admitting them to 
be true, they were made the sole and decisive 
standard for distinguishing between a genuine 
and a false profession of it. And perhaps they 
were applied in eager haste to any sentiment 
which he happened to express concerning reli- 
gion, as a test of its quality, and a proof of its 
corruptness. 

Instances may have occurred in which he 
has observed some one idea or doctrine, that 
was not the distinctive peculiarity of any sys- 
tem, to have so monopolized the mind, that 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 271 

every conversation, from whatever point of the 
compass it started, was certain to find its way 
to the favourite topic, while he was sometimes 
fretted, sometimes amused, never much im- 
proved, by observing its instinctive progress 
to the appointed place. If his situation and 
connexions rendered it unavoidable for him 
often to hear this unfortunate manner of dis- 
coursing on religion, his mind probably fell into 
a fault very similar to that of his well-meaning 
acquaintance. As this worthy man could never 
speak on the subject without soon bringing the 
whole of it down to one particular point, so 
the indocile and recusant auditor became un- 
able to think on the subject without adverting 
immediately to the narrow illustration of it 
exhibited by this one man ; insomuch that this 
image of combined penury and conceit became 
established in his mind as representative of the 
subject. In consequence of this connexion of 
ideas, he perhaps became disinclined to think 
on the subject at all; or, if he was disposed or 
constrained to think of it, he was so averse 
to let his views of Christianity thus converge to 
the littleness of a point, that he laboured to 
expand them till they lost all specifically evan- 
gelical distinctions in the wideness of generality 
and abstraction. 

Again, the majority of christians are pre- 
cluded, by their condition in life, from any 
considerable acquirement of general knowledge. 



272 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

It would be unpardonable in the more culti- 
vated man not to make the large allowance 
for the natural effect of this on the extent of 
their religious ideas. But it shall have hap- 
pened, that he has met with numbers who had 
no inconsiderable means, both in the way of 
money, judging by their unnecessary expenses, 
and of leisure, judging by the quantity of time 
consumed in trivial talk, or in needless sleep, 
to furnish their minds with various information, 
but who were quite on a level, in this respect, 
with those of the humblest rank. They never 
even suspected that knowledge could have any 
connexion with religion ; or that they could not 
be as clearly and comprehensively in possession 
of the great subject as a man whose faculties 
had been exercised, and whose extended ac- 
quaintance with things would supply an ample 
diversity of ideas illustrative of religion. He 
has perhaps even heard them make a kind 
of merit of their indifference to knowledge, as 
if it were the proof or the result of a higher 
value for religion. If there was ventured a 
hint of reprehensive wonder at their reading 
so little, and within so very confined a scope, it 
would be replied, that they thought it enough 
to read the Bible ; as if it were possible for 
a person whose mind fixes with inquisitive 
attention on what is before him, to read 
through the Bible without thousands of such 
questions being started in his thoughts, as can 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 273 

be answered only from sources of information 
extraneous to the Bible. But he perceived that 
this reading the Bible was no work of inquiring 
thought ; and indeed he has commonly found, 
that those who have no wish for any think like 
a general improvement in knowledge, have no 
disposition for the real business of thinking 
even in religion, and that their discourse on 
that subject is the exposure of intellectual 
poverty. He has seen them live on for a num- 
ber of years content with the same confined 
views, the same meagre list of topics, and the 
same uncouth religious language. In so con- 
siderable a space of time, the habitual inqui- 
sitiveness after various truth would have given 
much more clearness to their faculties, and 
much more precision to the articles of their 
belief. They might have ramified the few lead- 
ing articles, into a rich variety of subordinate 
principles and important inferences. They 
might have learned to place the christian truth 
in all those combinations with the other parts 
of our knowledge, by which it is enabled to 
present new and striking aspects, and to mul- 
tiply its arguments to the understanding, and 
its appeals to the heart. They might have 
enriched themselves by rendering nature, his- 
tory, and the present views of the moral world, 
tributary to the illustration and the effect of 
their religion. But they neglected, and even 
despised, all these means of enlarging their 



27 i ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

ideas of a subject which they professed to hold 
of infinite importance. Yet perhaps, if this 
man of more intellectual habits showed but 
little interest in conversing with them on that 
subject, or seemed intentionally to avoid it, this 
was considered as pure aversion to religion ; 
and what had been uninteresting to him as 
doctrine, then became revolting as reproof.* 

He may not unfrequently have heard worthy 
but illiterate persons expressing their utmost 
admiration of sayings, passages in books, or 
public discourses, which he could not help 
perceiving to be hardly sense, or to be the 
dictates of conceit, or to be common-place 
inflated to fustian. While on the other hand, 
if he has introduced a favourite passage, or an 
admired book, they have perhaps acknowledged 
no perception of its beauty, or expressed a 
doubt of its tendency, from its not being in 
canonical diction. Or perhaps they have directly 
avowed that they could not understand it, in a 
manner plainly implying that therefore it could 
be of no value. Possibly when he has expressed 
his high admiration of some of the views of the 
gospel, not ordinarily recognised or exhibited, 
and bearing what I may perhaps call a philoso- 
phical aspect, (such, for instance, as struck the 

* I own that what I said of Jesus Christ's gladly receiving 
one of the humbler intellectual order for his disciple, would 
be but little applicable to some of the characters that I 
describe. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 275 

mind of Rousseau,,) he has been mortified to 
find, that some peculiar and even sublime dis- 
tinctions of the religion of Christ are lost to 
many of his disciples, from being of too abstract 
a kind for the apprehension of any but improved 
and intellectual men. 

• If he had generally found in those professed 
christians whose mental powers and attainments 
were small, a candid humility, instructing them, 
while expressing their animated gratitude for 
what acquaintance with religion they had been 
able to attain, and for the immortal hopes 
springing from it, to feel that they had but a 
confined view of a subject which is of immense 
variety and magnitude, he might have been too 
much pleased by this amiable temper to be 
much repelled by the defective character of 
their conceptions and expressions. But often, 
on the contrary, they may have shown such a 
complacent assurance of sufficiency in the little 
sphere, as if it self-evidently comprised every 
thing which it is possible, or which it is of con- 
sequence, for any mind to see in the christian 
religion. They were like persons who should 
doubt the information that myriads more of 
stars can be seen through a telescope than they 
ever beheld, and who should have no curiosity 
to try. 

Many christians may have appeared to him 
to attach an extremely disproportionate im- 
portance to the precise modes of religious 

t 2 



276 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

observances, not only in the hour of controversy 
respecting them, when they are always ex- 
travagantly magnified, but in the habitual 
course of their religious references. These 
modes may be either such as are adhered to 
by communities and sects of christians, perhaps 
as their respective marks of distinction from 
one another ; or any smaller ceremonial pecu- 
liarities, devised and pleaded for by particular 
individuals or families. 

Certain things in the religious habits of some 
christians may have disgusted him excessively. 
Every thing which could even distantly remind 
him of grimace, would inevitably do this ; as, 
for instance, a solemn lifting up of the eyes, 
artificial impulses of the breath, grotesque and 
regulated gestures and postures in religious 
exercises, an affected faltering of the voice, and, 
I might add, abrupt religious exclamations in 
common discourse, though they were even bene- 
dictions to the Almighty, which he has often 
heard so ill-timed as to have an irreverent and 
almost a ludicrous effect. In a man of correct 
and refined taste, the happiest improvement in 
point of veneration for genuine religion will pro- 
duce no tolerance for such habits. Nor will the 
dislike to them be lessened by ever so perfect a 
conviction of the sincere piety of any of the 
persons who have fallen into them. I shall be 
justified in laying great stress on this particular; 
for I have known instances of extreme mischief 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 277 

done to the feelings relative to religion, in young 
persons especially, through the continued irrita- 
tion of disgust caused by such displeasing habits 
deforming personal piety. 

In the conversation of illiterate christians the 
supposed man of taste has perhaps frequently 
heard the most unfortunate metaphors and 
similes, employed to explain or enforce evan- 
gelical sentiments ; and probably, if he twenty 
times recollected one of those sentiments, the 
repulsive figure was sure to recur to his imagi- 
nation. If he has heard so many of these, that 
each christian topic has acquired its appropriate 
offensive images, you can easily conceive what 
a lively perception of the importance of the sub- 
ject itself must be requisite to overcome the 
disgust of the associations. The feeling accom- 
panying these topics, as connected with these 
distasteful ideas, will be somewhat like that 
which spoils the pleasure of reading a noble 
poet, Virgil for instance, when each admired 
passage recalls the phrases and images into 
which it has been degraded in that kind of 
imitation denominated travesty. It may be 
added, that the reluctance to think of the sub- 
ject because it is connected with these ideas, 
strengthens that connexion. For often the 
striving not to dwell on the disagreeable images, 
produces a mischievous reaction by which they 
press in more forcibly. The tenacity with which 
ideas adhere to the mind, is in proportion to the 



278 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

degree of interest, whether pleasing or un- 
pleasing, with which they affect it ; and an idea 
cannot well excite a stronger kind of interest 
than the earnest wish to escape from it. If we 
could cease to dislike it, it would soon cease to 
haunt us. It may also be observed, that the 
infrequency of thinking on the evangelical sub- 
jects, will confirm the injurious associations. 
The same mental law prevails in regard to sub- 
jects as to persons. If any unfortunate incident, 
or any circumstance of expression or conduct, 
displeased us in our first meeting with a person, 
it will be strongly recalled each time that we see 
him again, if we meet him but seldom ; on the 
contrary, if our intercourse become frequent or 
habitual, such a first unpleasing circumstance, 
and others subsequent to it, may be forgotten. 
This observation might be of some use to a man 
who really wishes to neutralize in his mind the 
offensive associations with evangelical subjects ; 
as he may be assured that one of the most 
effectual means would be, to make those sub- 
jects familiar by often thinking on them. 

While remarking on the effect of unpleasing 
images employed to illustrate christian prin- 
ciples, I cannot help wishing that religious 
teachers had the good taste to avoid amplifying 
the metaphors of an undignified order, which 
may have a kind of coarse fitness for illustration, 
and are perhaps employed, in a short and 
transient way, in the Bible. I shall notice only 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 279 

that common one, in which the benefits and 
pleasures of religion are represented under the 
image of food. I do not recollect that in the 
Scriptures this metaphor is ever drawn to a 
great length. But from the facility of the pro- 
cess, it is not strange that it has been amplified, 
both in books and discourses, into the most 
extended parallel descriptions ; exhausting the 
dining-room of images, and ransacking the 
language for substantives and adjectives, to 
stimulate the spiritual palate. The figure is 
combined with so many terms in our language, 
that it will unavoidably occur ; and the analogy 
briefly and simply suggested may sometimes 
assist the thought without lessening the subject. 
But it is degrading to spiritual ideas to be ex- 
tensively and systematically transmuted, I might 
say cooked, into sensual ones. The analogy 
between meaner and more dignified things 
should never be pursued further than one or 
two points of obviously useful illustration ; for, 
if it be traced to every particular in which a 
resemblance can be found or fancied, the meaner 
thing abdicates its humble office of merely indi- 
cating some qualities of the great one, and 
becomes formally its representative and equal. 
By their being made to touch at all points, the 
meaner is constituted a scale to measure and to 
limit the magnitude of the superior, and thus 
the importance of the one shrinks to the insig- 
nificance of the other. It will take some time 



280 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

for a man to recover any great degree of 
solemnity in thinking on the delights or the 
supports of religion, after he has seen them 
reduced into all the forms of eating and drink- 
ing. In such detailed analogies it often hap- 
pens, that the most fanciful, or that the coarsest 
points of the resemblance, remain longest in 
the thoughts. When the mind has been taught 
to descend to a low manner of considering 
divine truth, it will be apt to descend to the 
lowest. There is no such violent tendency to 
abstraction and sublimity, in the minds of the 
generality of readers and hearers, as to render it 
necessary to take any great pains for the pur- 
pose of retaining their ideas in some degree of 
alliance with matter. 

We are to acknowledge, then, the serious 
disadvantage under which evangelical religion 
presents itself to persons of mental refine- 
ment, with the associations which it has con- 
tracted from its uncultivated and injudicious 
professors. At the same time, it would be 
unjust not to observe that some christians, of 
a subordinate intellectual order, are distin- 
guished by such an unassuming simplicity, by 
so much rectitude of conscience, and by a 
piety so warm and even exalted, as to leave 
a cultivated man convicted of a great perver- 
sion of feeling, if the faith, of which these 
are living representatives, did not appear to 
him in stronger attractive association with 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 281 

their excellence, than in repulsive association 
with their intellectual inferiority. But I am 
supposing his mind to be in a perverted state, 
and am far from seeking to defend him. This 
supposition however being made, I feel no 
surprise, on surveying the prevailing mental 
condition of evangelical communities, that this 
man has acquired an accumulation of pre- 
judices against some of the distinguishing 
features of the gospel. Permitting himself to 
feel as if the circumstances which thus di- 
minish or distort an order of christian senti- 
ments, were inseparable from it, he is inclined 
to regret that there should be any divine 
sanctions against his framing for himself, on 
the foundation of some selected principles in 
Christianity which he cannot but admire, but 
with a qualifying intermixture of foreign ele- 
ments, a more liberalized scheme of religion. 

It was especially unfortunate if, in the 
advanced stage of this man's perhaps highly 
cultivated youth, while he was exulting in 
the conscious enlargement of intellect, and 
the quickening and vivid perceptiveness of 
taste, but was still to be regarded as in a 
degree the subject of education, it was his lot 
to have the principles of religion exhibited 
and inculcated in a repulsive language and 
cast of thought by the seniors of his family or 
acquaintance. In that case, the unavoidable 
frequency of intercourse must have rendered 



282 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

the counteractive operation of the unpleasing 
circumstances, associated with christian truth, 
almost incessant. And it would naturally be- 
come continually stronger. For each repeti- 
tion of that which offended his refined mental 
habits, would incite him to value and cherish 
them the more, and to cultivate them accord- 
ing to a standard still more foreign from all 
congeniality with his instructors. These habits 
he began and continued to acquire from books 
of elegant sentiment or philosophical specula- 
tion, which he read in disregard of the advice, 
perhaps, to occupy himself much more with 
works specifically religious. To such literary 
employment and amusement he has again and 
again returned, with a delightful rebound from 
systematic common -places, whether delivered 
in private or in public instruction ; and has felt 
the full contrast between the force, lustre, and 
mental richness, brightening and animating the 
moral speculations or poetical visions of ge- 
nius, and the manner in which the truths of 
the gospel had been conveyed. He was not 
serious and honest enough to make, when in 
retirement, any deliberate trial of abstracting 
these truths from the vehicle and combination 
in which they were thus unhappily set forth, 
and in a measure disguised, in order to see 
what they would appear in a better form. 
This change of form he was competent to 
effect, or, if he was not, he had but a very 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 283 

small portion of that mental superiority, of 
which he was congratulating himself that his 
disgusts were an evidence. But his sense of 
the duty of doing this was perhaps less co- 
gent, from his perceiving that the evangelical 
doctrines were inculcated by his relations with 
no less deficiency of the means of proving 
them true, than of rendering them interesting ; 
and he could easily discern that his instructors 
had received the articles of their faith impli- 
citly from a class of teachers, or the standard 
creed of a religious community, without even 
perhaps a subsequent exercise of reasoning to 
confirm what they had thus adopted. They 
believed these articles through the habit of 
hearing them, and maintained them by the 
habit of believing them. The recoil of his 
feelings, therefore, did not alarm his con- 
science with the apprehension that it might 
be absolutely the truth of God, that, under 
this uninviting form, he was loath to embrace. 
Unaided by such an impression already ex- 
isting, and unarmed with a force of argument 
to work conviction, the seriousness, perhaps 
sometimes harsh seriousness, of his friends, 
reiterating the assertion of his mind being in 
a fatal condition, till he should think and feel 
exactly as they did, was little likely to con- 
ciliate his repugnance. When sometimes their 
admonitions took the mild or pathetic tone, 
his respect for their piety, and his gratitude 



284 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

for their affectionate solicitude, had perhaps 
a momentary effect to make him earnestly 
wish he could renounce his intellectual fas- 
tidiousness, and adopt in pious simplicity all 
their feelings and ideas. But as the con- 
tracted views, the rude figures, and the mix- 
ture of systematic and illiterate language, 
recurred, his mind would again revolt, and 
compel him to say, This cannot, will not, be 
my mode of religion. 

Now, one wishes there had been some en- 
lightened friend to say to such a man, Why 
will you not understand that there is no 
necessity for this to be the mode of your 
religion ? By what want of acuteness do you 
fail to distinguish between the mode, (a mere 
extrinsic and accidental mode,) and the sub- 
stance ? In the world of nature you see the 
same elements wrought into the plainest and 
the most beautiful, into the most diminutive and 
the most majestic forms. So the same simple 
principles of christian truth may constitute the 
basis of a very inferior, or a very noble, or- 
der of ideas. The principles themselves have 
an essential quality which is not convertible ; 
but they were not imparted to man to be 
fixed in the mind as so many bare scientific 
propositions, each confined to one single mode 
of conception, without any collateral ideas, and 
to be always expressed in one unalterable 
form of words. They are placed there in 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 285 

order to spread out, if I might so express it, 
into a great multitude and diversity of ideas 
and feelings. These ideas and feelings, form- 
ing round the pure simple principles, will 
correspond, and will make those principles 
themselves seem to correspond, to the meaner 
or the more dignified intellectual rank of the 
mind. Why will you not perceive, that if the 
subject takes so humble a style in its less 
intellectual believers, it is not that it cannot 
unfold greater proportions through a grada- 
tion of larger and still larger faculties, and 
with facility occupy the whole capacity of the 
amplest, in the same manner as the ocean fills 
a gulf as easily as a creek! Through this 
climax it retains an identity of its essential 
principles, and appears progressively a nobler 
thing only by gaining a position for more 
conspicuously displaying itself. Why will you 
not go with it through this gradation, till you 
see it presented in a greatness of character 
adequate to the utmost that you can, without 
folly, attribute to yourself of large and im- 
proved faculty ? Never fear lest the gospel 
should prove not sublime enough for the ele- 
vation of your thoughts. If you could attain 
an intellectual eminence from which you would 
look with pity on the rank you at present 
hold, you would still find the dignity of this 
subject on your level, and rising above it. 
Do you doubt this ? What then do you think 



286 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

of such spirits, for instance, as those of Mil- 
ton and Pascal ? And by how many degrees 
of the intellectual scale shall yours surpass 
them, to authorize your feeling that to be 
little which they felt to be great ? They were 
at times sensible of the magnificence of chris- 
tian truth, filling, distending, and exceeding, 
their faculties, and could have wished for even 
greater powers to do it justice. In their loftiest 
contemplations, they did not feel their minds 
elevating the subject, but the subject elevating 
their minds. Now consider that their views 
of the gospel were, in essence, the same with 
those of its meanest sincere disciples ; and 
that therefore many sentiments which, by their 
unhapy form, have disgusted you so much, 
bore a faithful though humble analogy to the 
ideas of these illustrious christians. Why then, 
while hearing such sentiments, have you not 
learnt the habit of recognising this analogy, 
and in pursuance of it casting your thought 
upward to the highest style of the subject, in- 
stead of abandoning the subject itself in the 
recoil from the unfortunate mode of present- 
ing it ? Have you not cause to fear that your 
dislike goes deeper than this exterior of its 
exhibition ? For, else, would you not anxiously 
seek, and rejoice to meet, the divine subject 
in that transfiguration of aspect by which its 
grandeur would thus be redeemed ? 

I would make a solemn appeal to the under- 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 287 

standing and the conscience of such a man. 
I would say to him, Is it to the honour of a 
mind of taste, that it loses, when the religion 
of Christ is concerned, all the value of its 
discrimination? Do you not absolutely know 
that the littleness which you see investing 
that religion is adventitious ? Are you not 
certain that in hearing the discourse of such 
men, if they were now to be found, as those 
I have named, the evangelical truths would 
appear to you sublime, and that they cannot 
be less so in fact than they would appear 
as displayed from those minds ? But even 
suppose that they also failed, and that all 
modern christians, without exception, had 
conspired to give an unattractive and unim- 
pressive aspect to the subject of their pro- 
fession, there is still the Christian Revelation 
— may I not presume that you sometimes 
read it ? But this is to be done in that 
state of susceptible seriousness, without which 
you will have no just apprehension of its 
character ; without which you are but like 
an ignorant clown who, happening to look 
at the heavens, perceives nothing more awful 
in that immeasurable wilderness of suns than 
in the row of lamps along the streets. 
If you do read that book, in the better 
state of feeling, I have no comprehension 
of the constitution of your mind, if the first 
perception would not be that of a simple 



288 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

venerable dignity, and if the second would not 
be that of a certain abstract undefinable mag- 
nificence ; a perception of something which, 
behind this simplicity, expands into a great- 
ness beyond the compass of your mind ; an 
impression like that with which a thoughtful 
and imaginative man might be supposed to 
have looked on the countenance of Newton, 
feeling a kind of mystical absorption in the 
attempt to comprehend the magnitude of the 
soul residing within that form. When in this 
state of serious susceptibility, have you not 
also perceived in the character and the manner 
of the first apostles of this truth, while they 
were declaring it, an expression of dignity, 
altogether different from that of other dis- 
tinguished men, and much more elevated and 
unearthly ? If you examined the cause, you 
perceived that the dignity arose partly from 
their being employed as living oracles of this 
truth, and still more from their whole cha- 
racters being pervaded by its spirit. And 
have you not been sometimes conscious, for 
a moment, that if it possessed your soul in 
the same manner as it did theirs, it would 
raise you to be one of the most excellent 
order of mortals ?. You would then stand 
forth in a combination of sanctity, devotion, dis- 
interestedness, superiority to external things, 
energy, and aspiring hope, in comparison of 
which the ambition of a conqueror, or the 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 289 

pride of a self-admiring philosopher, would be 
a very vulgar kind of dignity. You acknow- 
ledge these representations to be just ; you 
allow that the kind of sublimity which you 
have sometimes perceived in the New Testa- 
ment, that the qualities of the apostolic spirit, 
and that the intellectual and moral greatness 
of some modern christians, express the genuine 
character of the evangelical religion, showing 
that character to be of great lustre. But 
then, is it not most disingenuous in you to 
suffer the meanness which you know to be 
but associated and separable, to be admitted 
by your own mind as an excuse for its alien- 
ation from what is acknowledged to be in 
itself the very contrary of meanness ? Ought 
you not to turn on yourself, with indignation 
at that want of rectitude which resigns you 
to the effect of these associations, or with 
contempt of the debility which tries in vain 
to break them? Is it for you to be offended 
at the mental weakness of christians, you, whose 
intellectual vigour, and whose sense of justice, 
but leave you to sink helpless in the fastidious- 
ness of sickly taste, and to lament that so many 
inferior spirits have been consoled and saved by 
this divine faith as to leave on it a soil which 
forbids your embracing it, even though your 
own salvation depend ? At the very same time 
perhaps this weakness takes the form of pride. 
Let that pride speak out; it would be curious 



290 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

to hear it say, that your mental refinement per- 
haps might have permitted you to take your 
ground on that eminence of the christian faith 
where Milton and Pascal stood, if so many 
humbler beings did not disgrace it, by occu- 
pying the declivity and the vale. 

But after all, what need of referring to 
illustrious names ? as if the claims of that 
which you acknowledge to be from heaven 
should be made to depend on the number 
of those who have received it gracefully ; or 
as if a rational being could calmly wait for 
his taste to be conciliated, before he would 
embrace a system by which his immortal 
interest is to be secured. The Sovereign 
Authority has signified what the difference shall 
be in the end, between the consequences of re- 
ceiving or not receiving the evangelic declara- 
tion. Is the difference so announced of such 
small account that you would not, on serious 
consideration, be overwhelmed with wonder and 
shame, that so minor an interference as that of 
mere taste should so long have made you unjust 
to yourself in relation to what you are in pro- 
gress to realize ? And if, persisting to decline 
an exercise of such faithful consideration, you 
go on a venture to meet a consequence un- 
speakably disastrous, will an unhallowed and 
proud refinement appear to have been a worthy 
cause for which to incur it ? You deserve 
to be disgusted with a divine communication, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 291 

and to lose all its benefits, if you can thus 
let every thing have a greater influence on 
your feelings concerning it than its truth and 
importance, and if its accidental and separable 
associations with littleness, can counteract its 
essential inseparable ones with the Governor 
and Redeemer of the world, with happiness, 
and with eternity. With what compassion 
might you be justly regarded by an illiterate but 
zealous christian, whose interest in the truths 
of the New Testament, at once constitutes the 
best felicity here, and securely carries him to- 
ward the kingdom of his Father ; while you are 
standing aloof, and perhaps thinking, that if he 
and all such as he were dead, you might, after a 
while, acquire the spirit which should impel you 
also toward heaven. But why do you not feel 
your individual concern in this great subject as 
absolutely as if all men were dead, and you 
heard alone in the earth the voice of God ; or 
as if you saw, like the solitary exile of Patmos, 
an awful appearance of Jesus Christ, and the 
visions of hereafter ? What is it to you that 
many christians have given an aspect of little- 
ness to the gospel, or that a few have sustained 
and exemplified its sublimity ? 



u 2 



292 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 



LETTER III. 



Another cause which I think has tended 
to render evangelical religion less acceptable 
to persons of taste, is the peculiarity of lan- 
guage adopted in the discourses and books 
of its teachers, as well as in the religious 
conversation and correspondence of the majo- 
rity of its adherents. I do not refer to any 
past age, when an excessive quaintness de- 
formed the composition of so many writers on 
religion and all other subjects ; my assertion is 
respecting the diction at present in use. 

The works collectively of the best writers in 
the language, of those especially who may be 
called the moderns of the language, have created 
and substantially fixed a standard of general 
phraseology. If any department is exempted 
from the authority of this standard, it is the low 
one of humour and buffoonery, in which the 
writer may coin and fashion phrases at his whim. 
But in the language of the higher, and of what 
may be called middle order of writing, that 
authority is the law. It does indeed allow 
indefinite varieties of what is called style, since 
twenty able and approved writers might be 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 293 

cited, who have each a different style ; but yet 
there is a certain general character of expression 
which they have mainly concurred to establish. 
This compound result of all their modes of 
writing is become sanctioned as the classical 
manner of employing the language, as the form 
in which it constitutes the most rectified general 
vehicle of thought. And though it is difficult 
to define this standard, yet a well-read person 
of taste feels when it is transgressed or deserted, 
and pronounces that no classical writer has 
employed that phrase, or would have combined 
those words in such a manner. 

The deviations from this standard must be, 
first, by mean or vulgar diction, which is below 
it ; or secondly, by a barbarous diction, which is 
out of it, or foreign to it ; or thirdly, by a 
diction which, though foreign to it, is yet not 
to be termed barbarous, because it is elevated 
entirely above the authority of the standard, by 
some transcendent force or majesty of thought, 
or a super-human communication of truth. 

I might make some charge against the lan- 
guage of divines under the first of these dis- 
tinctions ; but my present attention is to what 
seems to me to come under the second cha- 
racter of difference from the standard, that of 
being barbarous. — The phrases peculiar to any 
trade, profession, or fraternity, are barbarous, 
if they were not low ; they are commonly both. 
The language of law is felt by every one to 



294 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

be barbarous in the extreme, not only by the 
huge lumber of its technical terms, but by its 
very structure, in the parts not consisting of 
technical terms. The language of science is 
barbarous, as far as it differs arbitrarily, and in 
more than the use of those terms which are 
indispensable to the science, from the pure 
general model. And I am afraid that, on the 
same principle, the accustomed diction of evan- 
gelical religion also must be pronounced bar- 
barous. For I suppose it will be instantly 
allowed, that the mode of expression of the 
greater number of evangelical divines,* and of 

* When I say evangelical divines, I concur with the 
opinion of those, who deem a considerable, and, in an intel- 
lectual and literary view, a highly respectable class of the 
writers who have professedly taught Christianity, to be not 
strictly evangelical. They might rather be denominated 
moral and philosophical divines, illustrating and enforcing 
very ably the generalities of religion, and the christian 
morals, but not placing the economy of redemption exactly 
in that light in which the New Testament appears to place 
it. Some of these have avoided the kind of dialect on which 
I am animadverting, not only by means of a diction more 
classical and dignified in the general principles of its struc- 
ture, but also by avoiding the ideas with which the phrases 
of this dialect are commonly associated. I may however 
here observe, that it is by no means altogether confined to 
the specifically evangelical department of writing and dis- 
course, though it there prevails the most, and with the 
greatest number of phrases. It extends, in some degree, 
into the majority of writing on religion in general, and may 
therefore be called the theological, almost as properly as the 
evangelical, dialect. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 295 

those taught by them, is widely different from 
the standard of general language, not only by the 
necessary adoption of some peculiar terms, but 
by a continued and systematic cast of phraseo- 
logy ; insomuch that in reading or hearing five 
or six sentences of an evangelical discourse, 
you ascertain the school by the mere turn of 
expression, independently of any attention to 
the quality of the ideas. If, in order to try 
what those ideas would appear in an altered 
form of words, you attempted to reduce a para- 
graph to the language employed by intellectual 
men in speaking or writing well on general 
subjects, you would find it must be absolutely a 
version. You know how easily a vast mass 
of exemplification might be quoted; and the 
specimens would give the idea of an attempt 
to create, out of the general mass of the lan- 
guage, a dialect which should be intrinsically 
spiritual ; and so exclusively appropriated to 
christian doctrine as to be totally unserviceable 
for any other subject, and to become ludicrous 
when applied to it.* And this being extracted, 
like the sabbath from the common course of 

* This is so true, that it is no uncommon expedient with 
the would-be wits, to introduce some of the spiritual phrases, 
in speaking of any thing which they wish to render ludicrous ; 
and they are generally so far successful as to be rewarded by 
the laugh or the smile of the circle, who probably may never 
have had the good fortune of hearing wit, and have not the 
sense or conscience to care about religion. 



296 



ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 



time, the general range of diction is abandoned, 
with all its powers, diversities, and elegance, to 
secular subjects and the use of the profane. It 
is a kind of popery of language, vilifying every 
thing not marked with the signs of the holy 
church, and forbidding any one to minister to 
religion except in consecrated speech. 

Suppose that a heathen foreigner had acquired 
a full acquaintance with our language in its 
most classical construction, yet without learning 
any thing about the gospel, (which it is true 
enough he might do,) and that he then hap- 
pened to read or hear an evangelical discourse — 
he would be exceedingly surprised at the cast 
of phraseology. He would probably be arrested 
and perplexed in such a manner as hardly to 
know whether he was trying his faculties on the 
new doctrine, or on the singularity of the 
diction ; whereas the general course of the 
diction should appear but the same as that 
to which he had been accustomed. It should 
be such that he would not even think of it, 
but only of the new subject and peculiar ideas 
which were coming through it to his apprehen- 
sion ; unless there could be some advantage in 
the necessity of looking at these ideas through 
the mist and confusion of the double medium, 
created by the super-induction of an uncouth 
special dialect on the general language. — Or if 
he were not a stranger to the subject, but had 
acquired its leading principles from some author 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 297 

or speaker who employed (with the addition 
of a very small numher of peculiar terms) the 
same kind of language in which any other se- 
rious subject would have been discoursed on, he 
would still be not less surprised. " Is it pos- 
sible," he would say, as soon as he could appre- 
hend what he was attending to, "that these 
are the very same views which lately presented 
themselves with such lucid simplicity to my 
understanding? Or is there something more, 
of which I am not aware, conveyed and con- 
cealed under these strange shapings of phrase ? 
Is this another stage of the religion, the school 
of the adepts, in which I am not yet initiated ? 
And does religion then every where, as well 
as in my country, affect to show and guard its 
importance by relinquishing the simple language 
of intelligence, and assuming a sinister dialect of 
its own ? Or is this the diction of an individual 
only, and of one who really intends but to con- 
vey the same ideas that I have elsewhere re- 
ceived in so much more clear and direct a 
vehicle of words? But then, in what remote 
corner, placed beyond the authority of criti- 
cism and the circulation of literature, where a 
noble language stagnates into barbarism, did 
this man study his religion and acquire his 
phrases ? Or by what inconceivable perversion 
of taste and of labour has he framed, for the 
sentiments of his religion, a mode of expression 
so uncongenial with the eloquence of his 



298 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

country, and so calculated to exclude it from 
all benefit of that eloquence ?" 

My dear friend, if I were not conscious of a 
most sincere veneration for evangelical religion 
itself, I should be more afraid to trust myself in 
making these observations on the usual manner 
of expressing its ideas. If my description be 
exaggerated, I am willing to be corrected. But 
that there is a great and systematical alienation 
from the true classical diction, is most palpably 
obvious : and I cannot help regarding it as an 
unfortunate circumstance. It gives the gospel 
too much the air of a professional thing, which 
must have its peculiar cast of phrases, for the 
mutual recognition of its proficients, in the same 
manner as other professions, arts, crafts, and 
mysteries, have theirs. This is officiously 
placing the singularity of littleness to draw 
attention to the singularity of greatness, which 
in the very act it misrepresents and obscures. 
It is giving an uncouthness of mien to a beauty 
which should attract all hearts. It is teaching 
a provincial dialect to the rising instructor of a 
world. It is imposing the guise of a cramped 
formal ecclesiastic on what is destined for an 
universal monarch. 

Would it not be an improvement in the 
administration of religion, by discourse and 
writing, if christian truth were conveyed in that 
neutral vehicle of expression which is adapted 
indifferently to common serious subjects ? But 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 299 

it may be made a question whether it can be 
perfectly conveyed in such language. This 
point therefore requires a little consideration. — 
The diction on which I have animadverted, may 
be described under three distinctions. 

The first is a peculiar way of using various 
common words. And this peculiarity consists 
partly in expressing ideas by such single words 
as do not simply and directly belong to them, 
instead of other single words which do simply 
and directly belong to them, and in general lan- 
guage are used to express them ; * and partly 
in using such combinations of words as make 
uncouth phrases. Now what necessity ? The 
answer is immediately obvious as to the former 
part of the description ; there can be no need to 
use one common word in an affected and forced 
manner to convey an idea, which there is 
another common word at hand to express in the 
simplest and most usual manner. And then as 
to phrases, consisting of an uncouth combina- 
tion of words which are common, and have 
no degree of technicality, — are they necessary ? 
They are not absolutely necessary, unless each 
of these combinations conveys a thought of so 
exquisitely singular a turn, that no other con- 
junction of terms could have expressed it ; 

* As for instance, walk, and conversation, instead of con- 
duct, actions, or deportment; flesh, instead of, sometimes, 
body, sometimes natural inclination. 



300 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

which was never suggested by one mind to 
another till these three or four words, falling out 
of the general order of the language, gathered 
into a peculiar phrase ; which cannot be ex- 
pressed in the language of another country that 
has not a correspondent idiom ; and which will 
vanish from the world if ever this phrase shall 
be forgotten. But these combinations of words 
have no such pretensions. When you obtain 
their meaning, you may well wonder why a 
peculiar apparatus of phrase should have been 
constructed, to bring and retain such an ele- 
ment of thought within the sphere of your 
understanding. But indeed the very circum- 
stance of there being nothing extraordinary in 
the sense, may have been one inducement to the 
contrivance. There may have been a certain 
discontent that the import should not appear 
more significant, more weighty, more sacred, 
more authoritative, than it could be made to 
appear as conveyed in common secular language. 
It could not be trusted to have its proper effect, 
without some special token borne on its exterior 
to warn us to pay it reverence. In whatever 
manner, however, the language came to be per- 
verted into these artificial modes, it would be 
easy to try whether the ideas, of which they are 
the vehicles, are such as they exclusively are 
competent and privileged to convey, insomuch 
that their rejection would be the forfeiture of a 
certain portion of religious truth and sentiment, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 301 

which would thereupon retire beyond the con- 
fines of our intelligence, disdaining to stay and 
make an abode in common forms of language. 
And it would be found that these phrases, as it 
is within our familiar experience that all phrases 
consisting of only common words, and having 
no relation to art or science, can be exchanged 
for several different combinations of words, 
without materially altering the thought or 
lengthening the expression. Make the experi- 
ment on any paragraph written in the manner in 
question, on any religious topic whatever, and 
see whether you cannot melt all the uncouth 
constructions of diction, to be cast in a new and 
uncanonical shape, without letting any sense 
there was in them evaporate. I conclude then, 
that what I have described as the first part of 
the theological dialect, the peculiar mode of 
using common words, is not absolutely necessary 
as a vehicle of christian truths. 

The second part of the dialect consists, not 
in a peculiar mode of using common words, but 
in a class of words peculiar in themselves, as 
being seldom used except by divines, but of 
which the meaning can be expressed, without 
definition or circumlocution, by other single 
terms which are in general use. For example, 
edification, tribulation, blessedness, godliness, 
righteousness, carnality, lusts, (a term peculiar 
and theological only in the plural,) could be ex- 
changed for parallel terms too obvious to need 



302 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

mentioning. It is true indeed that there are 
very few terms, if any, perfectly synonymous. 
But when there are several words of very similar 
though not exactly the same signification, and 
none of them belong to an art or science, the 
one which is selected is far more frequently used 
in that general meaning by which it is merely 
equivalent to the others, than in that precise 
shade of meaning by which it is distinguished 
from them. The words instruction, improve- 
ment, for instance, may not express exactly the 
sense of edification ; but the word edification is 
probably not often used by a writer or speaker 
with any recollection of that peculiarity of its 
meaning by which it differs from improvement 
or instruction. This is still more true of some 
other words, as, for example, tribulation and 
affliction. Whatever small difference of import 
these words may have in virtue of derivation, it 
is probable that no man ever wrote tribulation 
rather than affliction on account of such diffe- 
rence. If, in addition to these two, the 
word distress has offered itself, the selection 
of any one from the three has perhaps always 
been determined by habit, or accident, rather 
than by any perception of a distinct significa- 
tion. The same remark is applicable to the 
words blessed, happy, righteous, virtuous, carnal, 
sensual, and a multitude of others. So that 
though there are few words strictly synonymous, 
yet there are very many which are so in effect, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 303 

even by the allowance and sanction of the most 
rigid laws to which any of the best writers have 
conformed their composition. Perhaps this is 
a defect in human thinking ; of which the ideal 
perfection may be, that every conception should 
be so discriminative and precise, that no two 
words, which have a definable shade of diffe- 
rence in their meaning, should be equally and 
indifferently eligible to express that conception. 
But what writer or speaker will ever even 
aspire to such perfection of thinking ? — not to 
say that if he did, he would soon find the voca- 
bulary of the most copious language deficient 
of single direct terms, and indeed of possible 
combinations of terms, to mark all the sensible 
modifications of his ideas. If a divine felt that 
he had such extreme discrimination of thought, 
that he meant something clearly different by the 
words carnal, godly, edifying, and so of many 
others, from what he could express by the 
words, sensual, pious, religious, instructive, he 
would certainly do right to adhere to the more 
peculiar words ; but if he does not, he may 
perhaps improve the vehicle, without hurting 
the material, of his religious communications, by 
adopting the general and what may be called 
classical mode of expression. 

The third distinction of the theological dialect 
consists in words almost peculiar to the lan- 
guage of divines, and for which equivalent 
terms cannot be found, except in the form of 



304 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

definition or circumlocution. Sanctification, 
regeneration, grace, covenant, salvation, and a 
few more, may be assigned to this class. These 
may be called, in a qualified sense, the technical 
terms of evangelical religion. Now, separately 
from any religious considerations, it is plainly 
necessary, in a literary view, that all those 
terms that express a modification of thought 
which there are no other words competent to 
express, without great circumlocution, should 
be retained. They are requisite to the suffi- 
ciency of the language. And then, in consider- 
ing those terms as connected with the christian 
truth, I am ready to admit, that it will be of 
advantage to that truth, for some of those 
peculiar doctrines, of which it partly consists, to 
be permanently denominated by certain peculiar 
words, which shall stand as its technical terms. 
But here several thoughts suggest themselves. 

First, the definitions of some of these chris- 
tian terms are not absolutely unquestionable. 
The words have assumed the specific formality 
of technical terms, without having completely 
the quality and value of such terms. A certain 
laxity in their sense renders them of far less 
use in their department, than the terms of 
science, especially of mathematical science, are 
in theirs. Technical terms have been the 
lights of science, but, in many instances, the 
shades of religion. It is most unfortunate, 
when, in disquisitions or instructions, the grand 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 305 

leading words, on which the force of all the rest 
depends, have not a precise and indisputable 
signification. The effect is similar to that 
which takes place in the ranks of an army, 
when an officer has a doubtful opinion, or gives 
indistinct orders. What I would infer from 
these observations is, that a christian writer or 
speaker will occasionally do well, instead of 
using the peculiar term, to express at length in 
other words, at the expense of much circumlo- 
cution, that idea which he would have wished 
to convey if he had used that peculiar term. I 
do not mean that he should do this so often as 
to render the term obsolete. It might be use- 
ful sometimes, especially in verbal instruction, 
both to introduce the term, and to give such a 
sentence as I have described. Such an ex- 
pletive repetition of the idea will more than 
compensate for the tediousness, by the distinct- 
ness and fulness of enunciation.* 

Secondly, if the definitions of the christian 
peculiar terms were even as precise and fixed 
as those of scientific denominations, yet the 
nature of the subject is such as to permit an 
indolent mind to pronounce or to hear these 
terms without recollecting those definitions. In 
delivering or writing, and in hearing or reading, 

* It is needless to observe that this would be a super- 
fluous labour with respect to the most simple of the peculiar 
words, such for instance as salvation. 

X 



306 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

a mathematical lecture, both the teacher and 
the pupil are compelled to form in their minds 
the exact idea which each technical term has 
been denned to signify ; else the whole train of 
words is mere sound and inanity. But in re- 
ligion, a man has a feeling of having some 
general ideas connected with all the words as 
he hears them, though he perhaps never studied, 
or does not retain, the definition of one. I shall 
have occasion to repeat this remark, and there- 
fore do not enlarge here. The inference is the 
same as under the former observation ; it is, 
that the technical terms of Christianity will con- 
tribute little to precision of thought, unless the 
ideas which they signify be often expressed at 
length in other words, either in explanation of 
those terms when introduced, or in substitution 
for them when omitted. 

Thirdly, it is not in the power of single 
theological terms, however precise their defini- 
tions may at any time have been, to secure to 
their respective ideas an unalterable stability. 
Unless the ideas themselves, by being often 
expressed in common words, preserve the signi- 
fication of the terms, the terms will not preserve 
the accuracy of the ideas. This is true no 
doubt of the technical terms of science ; but it 
is true in a much more striking manner of the 
peculiar words in theology. If the technical 
terms of science, at least of the strictest kind 
of science, were to cease to mean what they 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 307 

had been defined to mean, they would cease to 
mean any thing, and the change would be only 
from knowledge to blank ignorance. But in 
the christian theology, the change might be 
from truth to error ; since the peculiar words 
might cease to mean what they were once 
denned to mean, by being employed in a dif- 
ferent sense. It may not be difficult to con- 
jecture in what sense the terms conversion and 
regeneration, for example, were used by the 
reformers, and the men who may be called the 
fathers of the established church of this coun- 
try ; but what sense have they subsequently 
borne in the writings of many of its di- 
vines ? The peculiar words may remain, when 
the ideas which they were intended to per- 
petuate are gone. Thus instead of being 
the signs of those ideas, they become their 
monuments ; and monuments profaned into 
abodes for the living enemies of the departed. 
It must indeed be acknowledged, that in some 
instances innovations of doctrine have been in- 
troduced partly by declining the use of the 
words that designated the doctrines which it 
was wished to render obsolete ; but they have 
been still more frequently and successfully in- 
troduced, under the advantage of retaining the 
terms while the principles were gradually sub- 
verted. And therefore I shall be pardoned for 
repeating this once more, that since the peculiar 
words can be kept in one invariable signification 

x 2 



308 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

only by keeping that signification clearly in 
sight in another way than the bare use of these 
words themselves, it would be wise in christian 
authors and speakers sometimes to express the 
ideas in common words, either in expletive and 
explanatory connexion with the peculiar terms, 
or, occasionally, instead of them. I would still 
be understood to approve entirely of the use of 
a few of this class of terms; while the above 
observations may deduct very much from the 
usual estimate of their value and importance. 

These pages have attempted to show, in what 
particulars the language adopted by a great 
proportion of christian divines might be modi- 
fied, and yet remain faithful to the principles 
of christian doctrine. Such common words as 
have acquired an affected cast in theological 
use, might give place to the other common 
words which express the ideas in a plain and 
unaffected manner; and the phrases formed of 
common words uncouthly combined, may be 
swept away. — Many peculiar and antique words 
might be exchanged for other single words, of 
equivalent signification, and in general use. — 
And the small number of peculiar terms 
acknowledged and established as of permanent 
use and necessity, might, even separately from 
the consideration of modifying the diction, be 
often, with advantage to the explicit declaration 
and clear comprehension of christian truth, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 309 

made to give place to a fuller expression, in a 
number of common words, of those ideas of 
which these peculiar terms are the single signs. 

Now such an alteration would bring the 
language of divines nearly to the classical 
standard. If evangelical sentiments could be 
faithfully presented, in an order of words of 
which so small a part should be of specific cast, 
they could be presented in what should be 
substantially the diction of Addison or Pope. 
And if even Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and 
Hume, could have become christians by some 
mighty and sudden efficacy of conviction, and 
had determined to write thenceforth in the 
spirit of the Apostles, they would have found, 
if these observations be correct, no radical 
change necessary in the consistence of their 
language. An enlightened believer in Christi- 
anity might have been sorry, if, in such a case, 
he had seen any of them superstitiously labour- 
ing to acquire all the phrases of a school, in- 
stead of applying at once to its new vocation 
a diction fitted for the vehicle of universal 
thought. Are not they yet sufficient masters 
of language, it might have been asked with 
surprise, to express all their thoughts with the 
utmost precision ? As their language had been 
found sufficiently specific to injure the gospel, 
it would have been strange if it had been too 
general to serve it. The required alteration 
would probably have been little more than to 



310 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

introduce familiarly the obvious denominations 
of the christian topics and objects, such as, re- 
demption, heaven, mediator, Christ, Redeemer, 
with the others of a similar kind, and a very few 
of those almost technical words which I have 
admitted to be indispensable. The habitual 
use of such denominations would have left the 
general order of their composition the same. 
And it would have been striking to observe by 
how comparatively small a difference of terms 
a diction which had appeared most perfectly 
pagan, could be christianized, when the writer 
had turned to christian subjects, and felt the 
christian spirit. — On the whole then, I conclude 
that, with the exception which I have distinctly 
made, the evangelical principles may be clearly 
exhibited in what may be called a neutral dic- 
tion. And if they may, I can imagine some 
reasons to justify the wish that it were generally 
employed. 

As one of these reasons, I may revert to the 
consideration of the impression made by the 
dialect which I have described, on those per- 
sons of cultivated taste whom this essay has 
chiefly in view. I am aware that they are 
greatly inclined to make an idol of their taste ; 
and I am aware also that no species of irreligion 
can be much worse than to sacrifice to this 
idol any thing which essentially belongs to 
Christianity. If any part of evangelical religion, 
all injurious associations being detached, were 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 311 

still of a nature to displease a refined taste,, the 
duty would evidently be to repress its claims 
and murmurs. We should dread the presump- 
tion which would require of the Deity, that his 
spiritual economy should be, both in reality and 
evidently to our view, correspondent in all parts 
to the type of order, grandeur, or beauty pre- 
sented to us in the constitution of the material 
world, or to those notions of them which have 
become conventionally established among culti- 
vated minds. But, at the same time, it is a 
most unwise policy for religion, that the sacri- 
fice of taste which ought, if required, to be sub- 
missively made to any part of either its essence 
or its form as really displayed from heaven, 
should be exacted to any thing unnecessarily 
and ungracefully superinduced by man. 

As another reason, I would observe, that the 
disciples of the religion of Christ would wish it 
to mingle more extensively and familiarly with 
social converse, and all the serious subjects of 
human attention. But then it should have 
every facility, that would not compromise its 
genuine character, for doing so. And a peculiar 
phraseology is the direct contrary of such facility, 
as it gives to what is already by its own nature 
eminently distinguished from common subjects, 
an artificial strangeness, which makes it difficult 
for discourse to slide into it, and revert to it 
and from it, without a formal and uncouth 
transition. The subject is placed in a condition 



312 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

like that of an entire foreigner in company, who 
is debarred from taking any share in the con- 
versation, till some one interrupts it by turning 
directly to him, and beginning to talk with him 
in the foreign language. You have sometimes 
observed, when a person has introduced reli- 
gious topics, in the course of perhaps a tole- 
rably rational conversation on other interesting 
subjects, that, owing to the cast of expression, 
fully as much as to the difference of the subject, 
it was done by an entire change of the whole 
tenour and bearing of the discourse, and with 
as formal an announcement as the bell ringing 
to church. Had his religious diction been more 
of a piece with the common cast of language of 
intelligent discourse, he might probably have 
introduced the subject sooner, and certainly 
with a much better effect. 

A third consideration, is, that evangelical 
sentiments would be less subject to the im- 
putation of fanaticism, if their language were 
less contrasted with that of other classes of 
sentiments. Here it is unnecessary to say, 
that no pusillanimity were more contemptible 
than that which, to escape this imputation, 
would surrender the smallest vital particle of 
the religion of Christ. We are to keep in 
solemn recollection his declaration, " Who- 
soever shall be ashamed of me and of my 
words, of him also shall the Son of man be 
ashamed." Any model of terms, which could 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 313 

not be superseded without precluding some 
idea peculiar to the gospel from the possi- 
bility of being faithfully expressed, it would 
be for his disciples to retain in spite of all 
the ridicule of the most antichristian age. 
But I am, at every step, assuming that every 
part of the evangelical system can be most 
perfectly exhibited in a diction but little pe- 
culiar ; and, that being admitted, would it 
not be better to avert the imputation, as far 
as this difference of language could avert it? 
Better, I do not mean, in the way of pro- 
tective convenience to any cowardly feeling, of 
the man who is liable to be called a fanatic 
for maintaining the evangelical principles ; he 
ought, on the ground both of christian fidelity 
and of manly independence, to be superior to 
caring about the charge ; but better, as to 
the light in which these principles might ap- 
pear to the persons who meet them with this 
prejudice. You may have observed that in 
attributing fanaticism, they often fix on the 
phrases, at least as much as on the abso- 
lute substance, of evangelical doctrines. Now 
would it not be better to show them what 
these doctrines are, as divested of these phrases, 
and exhibited clearly in that vehicle in which 
other important truths are presented ; and 
thus, at least, to defeat their propensity to 
seize on a mode of exhibition so convertible 
to the ludicrous, in defence against any claim 



314 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

made on them for seriousness respecting the 
substantial matter ? If sometimes their grave 
attention, their corrected apprehension, their 
partial approbation, might be gained, it were 
a still more desirable effect. And we can re- 
collect instances in which a certain degree of 
this good effect has resulted. Persons who had 
received unfavourable impressions of some of 
the peculiar ideas of the gospel, from having 
heard them advanced almost exclusively in the 
modes of phrase on which I have remarked, 
have acknowledged their prejudices to be some- 
what diminished, after these ideas had been 
presented in the simple general language of in- 
tellect. We cannot indeed so far forget the 
lessons of experience, and the inspired decla- 
rations concerning the dispositions of the human 
mind, as to expect that it would be more than 
very partially conciliated by any possible im- 
provement in the mode of exhibiting christian 
truth. But it were to be wished that every 
thing should be done to bring reluctant minds 
into doubt, at least, whether, if they cannot be 
evangelical, it be because they are of an order 
too rectified and refined. 

As a further consideration in favour of adopt- 
ing a more general language, it may be ob- 
served, that hypocrisy would then find a much 
greater difficulty, as far as speech is concerned, 
in supporting its imposture. The usual lan- 
guage of hypocrisy, at least of vulgar hypocrisy, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 315 

a 

is cant ; and religious cant is often an affected 
use of the phrases which have been heard em- 
ployed as appropriate to evangelical truth ; with 
which phrases the hypocrite has connected no 
distinct ideas, so that he would be confounded 
if an intelligent examiner were to require an ac- 
curate explanation of them ; while yet nothing 
is more easy to be sung or said. Now were 
this diction, for the greater part, to vanish from 
christian society, leaving the truth in its mere 
essence behind, and were, consequently, the pre- 
tender reduced to assume the guise of religion 
on the more laborious condition of acquiring 
an understanding of its leading principles, so 
as to be able to give them forth discriminatively 
in language of his own, the part of a hypocrite 
would be much less easily acted, and less fre- 
quently attempted. Religion would therefore 
be seldomer dishonoured by the mockery of a 
false semblance. 

Again, if this alteration of language were in- 
troduced, some of the sincere disciples of evan- 
gelical religion would much more distinctly feel 
the necessity of a positive intellectual hold on 
the principles of their profession. A systematic 
recurring formality of words tends to prevent 
a perfect understanding of the subject, by fur- 
nishing for complex ideas a set of ready-framed 
signs, (like stereotype in printing,) which a 
man learns to employ without really having the 
ideas of which the combination should consist. 



316 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

Some of the simple ideas which belong to the 
combination may be totally absent from his 
mind, the others may be most faintly appre- 
hended ; there is no precise construction there- 
fore of the thought; and thus the sign which 
he uses, stands in fact for nothing. If, on 
hearing one of these phrases, you were to turn 
to the speaker, and say, Now what is that idea ? 
What do you plainly mean by that expression ? 
— you would often find with how indistinct a 
conception, with how little attention to the 
very idea itself, the mind had been contented. 
And this contentment you would often observe 
to be, not a humble acquiescence in a con- 
sciously defective apprehension of some prin- 
ciple, of which a man feels and confesses the 
difficulty of attaining more than a partial con- 
ception, but the satisfied assurance that he fully 
understands what he is expressing. On another 
subject, where there were no settled forms of 
words to beguile him into the feeling as if he 
thought and understood, when in fact he did 
not, and where words must have been selected 
to define his own formation of the thought, his 
embarrassment how to express himself would 
have made him aware that his notion had no 
shape, and have compelled an intellectual effort 
to give it one. But it is against all reason 
that christian truth should be believed and pro- 
fessed with a less concern for precision, and 
at the expense of less mental exercise, than 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 317 

any other subject would require. And of how 
little consequence it would seem to be, in this 
mode of believing, whether a man entertains 
one system of principles or the opposite. 

But if such arguments could not be alleged, 
it would still seem far from desirable, without 
evident necessity, to clothe evangelical senti- 
ment in a diction varying in more than a few 
indispensable terms from the general standard, 
for the simple reason, that it must be barba- 
rous ; unless, as I have observed, it be raised 
quite above the authority of this standard, and 
of the criticism and the taste which appeal to 
it, by the venerable dignity of inspiration, which 
we have no more to expect, or by the intel- 
lectual power of a genius almost surpassing 
human nature. I do not know whether it be 
absolutely impossible that there should arise a 
man whose manner of thinking shall be so 
transcendent in originality and demonstrative 
vigour, as to authorize him to throw the lan- 
guage into a new order, all his own : but it 
is questionable whether there ever appeared 
such a writer, in any language which had been 
cultivated to its maturity. Even Milton, who 
might, if ever mortal might, be warranted to 
sport with all established authority and usage, 
and to run the language into whatever un- 
sanctioned forms would enlarge his freedom in 
grand mental enterprise, has been, for presuming 



318 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

in a certain degree to create for himself a pe- 
culiar diction, charged by Johnson with writing 
in a u Babylonish dialect." And Johnson's 
own mighty force of mind has not defended 
his Roman dialect from being condemned by 
all men of taste. The magic of Burke's elo- 
quence is not enough to beguile the perception, 
that it is of less dignified and commanding 
tone, has less of the claim to be " for all time," 
than if the same marvellous affluence of thought 
and fancy had been conveyed in a language of 
less arbitrary, capricious, and mannerish cha- 
racter. To revert to the theological peculiarity 
of dialect ; we may look in vain for any theo- 
logian of genius so supereminently powerful as 
might impress on it either a dignity to over- 
awe, or a grace to conciliate, literary taste. But 
indeed if we had such a one he would not 
attempt it. If he disregarded the classical 
standard, and chose to speak in an alien dia- 
lect, it would be a dialect of his own, formed 
in still more complete independence and dis- 
regard of the model which so many theological 
teachers have concurred to establish for the 
language of religion. 

It may be said, perhaps, that any such splendid 
intervention, in authorization of that model, can 
be spared ; for that the class contains so 
many of great ability, and so many more of 
great piety and usefulness, that the peculiar 
diction will maintain its ground. Probably it 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 319 

will do so, in a considerable degree, for a long- 
time. But no numbers, ability, or piety, will 
ever redeem it from the character of barbarism. 



LETTER IV. 



In defence of the diction which I have been 
describing, it will be said, that it has grown 
out of the language of the Bible. To a great 
extent, this is evidently true. Many phrases 
indeed which casually occurred in the writings 
of divines, and many which were laboriously 
invented by those who wished to give to di- 
vinity a complete systematic arrangement, and 
therefore wanted denominations or titles for 
the multitude of articles in the artificial dis- 
tribution, have been incorporated in the theo- 
logical dialect. But a large proportion of its 
phrases consists partly in such combinations of 
words as were taken originally from the Bible, 
and still more in such as have, from familiarity 
with that book, partly grown in insensible assi- 
milation, and partly been formed intentionally, 
but rudely, in resemblance, to its characteristic 
language. 



320 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

Before proceeding further, I do not know 
whether it may be necessary, in order to pre- 
vent misapprehension, to advert to the high 
advantage and propriety of often introducing 
sentences from the Bible, not only in theo- 
logical, but in any grave moral composition. 
Passages of the inspired writings must neces- 
sarily be cited, in some instances, in proof of 
the truth of opinions, and may be most hap- 
pily cited, in many others, to give a venerable 
and impressive air to serious sentiments which 
would be admitted as just though unsupported 
by such a reference to the authority. Both 
complete sentences, and striking short expres- 
sions, consisting perhaps sometimes of only two 
or three words, may be thus introduced with 
an effect at once useful and ornamental, while 
they appear pure and unmodified amidst the 
composition, as simple particles of scripture, 
quite distinct from the diction in which they 
are inserted. When thus appearing in their 
own genuine quality, as lines or parts of lines 
taken from a venerable book which is written 
in a manner very different from our common 
mode of language, they are read as expressions 
foreign to the surrounding composition, and, 
without an effort, referred to the work from 
which they are brought and of which they re- 
tain the unaltered consistence ; in the same 
manner as passages, or striking short expres- 
sions, adopted from some respected and well 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 321 

known classic in our language. Whatever dig- 
nity therefore characterizes the great work itself, 
is possessed also by these detached pieces in 
the various places where they are inserted, but 
not, if I may so express it, infused. And if 
they be judiciously inserted, they impart their 
dignity to the sentiments which they are em- 
ployed to enforce. This employment of the 
sacred expressions may be very frequent, as 
the Bible contains such an immense variety of 
ideas, applicable to all manner of interesting 
subjects. And from its being so familiarly 
known, its sentences or shorter expressions 
may be introduced without the formality of no- 
ticing, either in terms or by any other mark, 
from what volume they are drawn.— These ob- 
servations are more than enough, to obviate any 
imputation of wanting a due sense of the dig- 
nity and force which may be imparted by a 
judicious introduction of the language of the 
Bible. 

It is a different mode of using biblical lan- 
guage, that constitutes so considerable a part 
of the dialect which I have ventured to dis- 
approve. When insertions are made from the 
Bible in the manner here described as effective 
and ornamental, the composition exhibits two 
kinds of diction, each bearing its own separate 
character ; the one being the diction which 
belongs to the author, the other that of the 
sacred book whence the citations are drawn. 



322 OX THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

We pass along the course of his language with 
the ordinary feeling of being addressed in a 
common general phraseology ; and when the 
pure scripture expressions occur, they are re- 
cognized in their own peculiar character, and 
with the sense that we are reading, in small 
detached portions, just so much of the Bible 
itself. This distinct recognition of the two 
separate characters of language prevents any 
impression of an uncouth heterogeneous con- 
sistence. But in the theological dialect, that 
part of the phraseology which has a biblical 
cast, is neither the one of these two kinds of 
language nor the other, but an inseparable 
though crude amalgam of both. For the ex- 
pressions resembling those of scripture are 
blended and moulded into the substance of 
the diction. I say resembling ; for though some 
of them are precisely phrases from the Bible, 
yet most of them are phrases a little modified 
from the form in which they occur in the 
sacred book, by changing or adding words, by 
compounding two phrases into one, and by 
fitting the rest of the language to the biblical 
phrases by an imitative antique construction. 
In this manner the scriptural expressions, in- 
stead of appearing as distinguished points on 
a common ground, as gems advantageously set 
in an inferior substance, are reduced to become 
an ordinary and desecrated ingredient in an 
uncouth phraseology. They are no longer 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 323 

brought directly from the scriptures, by an act 
of thought and choice in the person who uses 
them, and with a recollection of their sacred 
origin ; but merely recur to him in the com- 
mon usage of the diction, into which they have 
degenerated in the school of divines. They 
therefore are now in no degree of the nature 
of quotations, introduced for their special ap- 
positeness in the particular instance, as the 
expressions of an admired and revered human 
author would be repeated. 

This is the kind of biblical phraseology which 
I could wish to see less employed, — unless it 
be either more venerable or more lucid than 
that which I have recommended. We may be 
allowed to doubt how far such language can 
be venerable, after considering, that it gives 
not the smallest assurance of striking or ele- 
vated thought, since in fact a vast quantity of 
most inferior writing has appeared in this kind 
of diction ; that it is not now actually drawn 
from the sacred fountains ; that the incessant 
repetition of its phrases in every kind of re- 
ligious exercise and performance has worn out 
any solemnity it might ever have had ; and 
that it is the very usual concomitant and sign 
of a servilely systematic and cramped man- 
ner of thinking. It may be considered also, 
that, from whatever high origin any modes and 
figures of speech may be drawn, they are 
reduced, in point of dignity, to the quality of 

y 2 



32 1 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

the material with which they become interfused ; 
so that if the whole character of the dialect 
of divines is not adapted to excite veneration, 
the proportion of it which gives a colour of 
scripture-phraseology, not standing out distinct 
from the composition, will have lost the virtue 
to excite it. And again, let it be considered, 
that in almost all cases, an attempt to imitate 
the peculiarity of form in which a venerable 
object is presented, not only fails to excite 
veneration, but provokes the contrary senti- 
ment ; especially when all things in the form 
of the venerable model are homogeneous, while 
the imitation exhibits some features of resem- 
blance incongruously combined with what is 
mainly and unavoidably of a different cast. A 
grand ancient edifice, of whatever order, or if 
it were of a construction peculiar to itself, would 
be an impressive object ; but a modern little 
one raised in its neighbourhood, of a conforma- 
tion for the greatest part glaringly vulgar, but 
with a number of antique windows and angles 
in imitation of the grand structure, would be a 
grotesque and ridiculous one. 

Scriptural phrases then can no longer make 
a solemn impression, when modified and vul- 
garized into the texture of a language which, 
taken altogether, is the reverse of every thing 
that can either attract or command. Such 
idioms may indeed remind one of prophets and 
apostles, but it is a recollection which prompts 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 325 

to say, Who are these men that, instead of 
respectfully introducing at intervals the direct 
words of those revered dictators of truth, seem 
to be mocking the sacred language by a bar- 
barous imitative diction of their own ? They 
may affect the forms of a divine solemnity, 
but there is no fire from heaven. They may 
show something like a burning bush, but it is 
without an angel. 

As to perspicuity, there will not be a ques- 
tion whether that be one of the recommenda- 
tions of this corrupt modification of the biblical 
phraseology. Without our leave, the mode of 
expression habitually associated with the general 
exercise of our intelligence, conveys ideas to 
us the most easily and the most clearly. And 
not unfrequently even in citing the pure ex- 
pressions of scripture, especially in doctrinal 
subjects, a religious instructor will find it in- 
dispensable to add a sentence in order to expose 
the sense in a plainer manner ; and that not 
as comment, but as explanation. He has many 
occasions for seeing that unless he do this, 
there will not be, in the minds of the persons 
to be instructed, exactly and definitively the idea 
which he understands to be expressed in the 
cited passage. Even to possess himself of a 
clear apprehension, there is, he might perceive 
in his mind, a kind of translating operation, 
embodying the idea in more common language, 
equivalent to the biblical. 



326 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

But would not the disuse of a language which 
seems to bear a constant reference to the Bible, 
by this intimate blending of its phraseology, 
tend to put the Bible out of remembrance ? 
It may be answered, that the Bible, as a book 
which will be read beyond all comparison more 
than any other, will keep itself in remembrance, 
among the serious part of mankind. Besides, 
it may be presumed that religious teachers and 
writers, however secularized the language they 
may adopt, will too often bring the sacred book 
in view by direct reference and citation, to 
admit any danger, from them, of its being 
forgotten. And though its distinct unmodified 
expressions should be introduced much seldomer 
in the course of their sentences, than the half- 
scriptural phrases are recurring in the diction 
under consideration, they would remind us of 
the Bible in a more advantageous manner, than 
a dialect which has lost the dignity of a sacred 
language without acquiring the grace of a 
classical one. I am sensible in how many 
points the illustration would be defective, but 
it would partly answer my purpose to observe, 
that if it were wished to promote the study of 
some venerated human author of a former age, 
suppose Hooker, the way would not be to 
attempt incorporating a great number of his 
turns of expression into the essential structure 
of our own diction, which would generally have 
a most uncouth effect, but to make respectful 






TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 327 

references, and often to insert in our composi- 
tion sentences, and parts of sentences, distinctly 
as his, while our own cast of diction was con- 
formed to the general modern standard. 

Let the oracles of inspiration be cited con- 
tinually, both as authority and illustration, in a 
manner that shall make the mind instantly refer 
each expression that is introduced to the vener- 
able book whence it is taken ; but let our part 
of religious language be simply ours, and let 
those oracles retain their characteristic form of 
expression unimitated, unparodied, to the end 
of time.* 

* In the above remarks, I have not made any distinction 
between the sacred books in their own language, and as 
translated. It might not however be improper to notice, 
that though there is a great peculiarity of language in the 
original, yet a certain proportion of the phraseology, as it 
stands in the translated scriptures, does not properly belong 
to the structure of the original composition, but is to be 
ascribed to the complexion of the language at the time when 
the translation was made. A translation, therefore, made 
now, and conformed to the present state of the language, in 
the same degree in which the earlier translation was con- 
formed to the state of the language at that time, would make 
an alteration in some parts of that phraseology which the 
theological dialect has attempted to incorporate and imitate. 
If therefore it mere the duty of divines to take the biblical 
mode of expression for their model, it would still be quite a 
work of supererogation to take this model in a wider degree 
of difference from the ordinary language suited to serious 
thoughts than as it would appear in such a later version. 
This would be a homage, not to the real diction of the 



328 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

An advocate for the theological diction, who 
should hesitate to maintain its necessity or 
utility on the ground that a considerable pro- 
portion of it has grown out of the language of 

sacred scriptures, but to the earlier cast of our own lan- 
guage. At the same time it must be admitted, both that the 
change of expression which a later version might, on merely 
philological principles, be justified by the progress and pre- 
sent standard of our language for making, would not be 
great : and that every sentiment of prudence and devotional 
taste forbids to make quite so much alteration as those prin- 
ciples might warrant. All who have long venerated the 
scriptures in their somewhat antique version, would protest 
against their being laboriously modernized into every nice 
conformity with the present standard of the language, and 
against any other than a very literal translation. If it could 
be supposed that our language had not yet attained a fixed 
state, but would progressively change for ages to come, 
it would be desirable that the translation of the Bible 
should always continue, except in what might essentially 
affect the sense, a century or two behind, for the sake of that 
venerable air which a shade of antiquity confers on the form, 
of what is so sacred and authoritative in substance. But I 
cannot allow that the same law is to be extended to the lan- 
guage of divines. They have no right to assume the same 
ground and the same distinctions as the Bible ; they ought 
not to affect to keep it company. There is no solemn dig- 
nity in their writings, which can claim to be invested 
with a venerable peculiarity. Imitate the Bible or not, their 
composition is merely of the ordinary human quality, and 
subject to the same rules as that of their contemporaries who 
write on other subjects. And if they remain behind the 
advanced state of the classical diction, those contemporaries 
will not allow them to excuse themselves by pretending to 
identify themselves with the Bible. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 329 

scripture, may yet think it has become neces- 
sary in consequence of so many people having 
been so long accustomed to it. I cannot but be 
aware, that many respectable teachers of Christi- 
anity would find a very great difficulty to depart 
from their inveterate usage. Nor could they 
acquire, if the change were attempted, a happy 
command of a more general language, without 
being considerably conversant with good writers 
on general subjects, and sedulously exercising 
themselves to throw their thoughts into a some- 
what similar current of language. Unless, 
therefore, this study has been cultivated, or is 
intended to be cultivated, it will perhaps be 
better for them, especially if far advanced in life, 
to retain the accustomed mode of expression 
with all disadvantages. Younger theological 
students, however, are supposed to become 
acquainted with those authors who have dis- 
played the utmost extent and powers of lan- 
guage in its freest form : and it is right for them 
to be told that evangelical doctrine would incur 
no necessary corruption or profanation by being 
conveyed in so liberal, diversified, and what I 
may call natural a diction ; a language which 
may be termed the day-light of thought, as com- 
pared with the artificial lights of the peculiar 
dialect. — With regard also to a considerable 
proportion of christian readers and hearers, I 
am sensible that a reformed language would be 
excessively strange to them. But may I not 



330 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

allege, without any affectation of paradox, that 
its being so strange to them would be a proof 
that it is quite time it were adopted ? For the 
manner in which some of them would receive 
this altered dialect, would prove that the cus- 
tomary phraseology had scarcely given them any 
clear notions. It would be found, as I have ob- 
served before, that to them the peculiar phrases 
had been not so much the vehicles of ideas, as 
substitutes for them. So undefined has been 
their understanding of the sense, while they me- 
chanically chimed to the sound, that if they hear 
the very ideas which these phrases signify, or 
did or should signify, expressed ever so plainly 
in other language, they do not recognise them ; 
and are instantly on the alert with the epithets, 
sound, orthodox, and all the watch-words of 
ecclesiastical suspicion. For such christians, the 
diction is the convenient asylum of ignorance, 
indolence, and prejudice. 

But I have enlarged far beyond my intention, 
which was only to represent, with a short illus- 
tration, that this peculiar dialect is unfavourable 
to a cordial reception of evangelical doctrines in 
minds of cultivated taste. This I know to be a 
fact from many observations in real life, espe- 
cially among intellectual young persons, not 
altogether regardless of serious subjects, and not 
seduced, though not out of danger of being so, 
by the cavils against the divine authority of 
Christianity itself. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 331 

After dismissing the consideration of the lan- 
guage, which has unfortunately been made the 
canonical garb of religion, I meant to have taken 
a somewhat more general view of the accumula- 
tion of bad writing, under which the evangelical 
theology has been buried ; and which has con- 
tributed to bring its principles in disfavour with 
too many persons of accomplished mental habits. 
A large proportion of that writing may be sen- 
tenced as bad, on more accounts than merely 
the peculiarity of dialect. But this is an in- 
vidious topic, and I shall make only a few 
observations. 

Proofs of an intellect considerably above the 
common level, with a literary execution dis- 
ciplined to great correctness, and partaking 
somewhat of elegance, are requisite on the 
lowest terms of acceptance for good writing, 
with cultivated readers. Superlatively strong- 
sense will indeed command attention, and even 
admiration, in the absence of all the graces, and 
notwithstanding much incorrectness or clumsi- 
ness in the workmanship of the composition. 
But when thus standing the divested and sole 
excellence, it must be pre-eminently conspicu- 
ous to have this power. Below this pitch of 
single or of combined merit, a book cannot 
please persons of discerning judgment and 
refined taste, though its subject be the most 
interesting on earth ; and for acceptableness, 
therefore, the subject is unfortunate in coming 



332 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

to those persons in that book. A disgusting cup 
will spoil the finest element which can be con- 
veyed in it, though that were the nectar of 
immortality. 

Now, in this view, I suppose it will be ac- 
knowledged that the evangelical cause has been, 
on the whole, far from happy in its prodigious 
list of authors. A number of them have dis- 
played a high order of excellence ; but one 
regrets as to a much greater number, that they 
did not revere the dignity of their religion too 
much, to beset and suffocate it with their super- 
fluous offerings. To you I need not expatiate 
on the character of the collective christian 
library. It will have been obvious to you that 
there is a multitude of books which form the 
perfect vulgar of religious authorship ; a vast 
exhibition of the most subordinate materials 
that can be called thought, in language too 
grovelling to be called style. Some of these 
writers seem to have concluded that the great- 
ness of the subject was to do every thing, and 
that they had but to pronounce, like David, the 
name of " the Lord of Hosts," to give pebbles 
the force of darts and spears. Others appear to 
have really wanted the perception of any great 
difference, in point of excellence, between the 
meaner and the superior modes of writing. If 
they had read alternately Barrow's or South's 
pages and their own, they probably might have 
doubted on which side to assign the palm. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 333 

A number of them, citing, in a perverted sense, 
the language of St. Paul, "not with excellency of 
speech," " not with enticing words of man's wis- 
dom," " not in the words which man's wisdom 
teacheth," expressly disclaim every thing that 
belongs to fine writing, not exactly as what they 
could not have attained, but as what they judge 
incompatible with the simplicity of evangelical 
truth and intentions. In the books of these 
several but kindred classes you are mortified to 
see how low religious thought and expression 
can sink ; and you almost wonder how it was 
possible for the noblest ideas that are known to 
the sublimest intelligences, the ideas of God, of 
Providence, of redemption, of eternity, to shine 
on a serious human mind without imparting 
some small occasional degree of dignity to the 
strain of thought. The indulgent feelings, which 
you entertain for the intellectual and literary 
deficiency of humble christians in their religious 
communications in private, are with difficulty 
extended to those who make for their thoughts 
this demand on public attention : it was neces- 
sary for them to be christians, but what made 
it their duty to become authors ? Many of the 
books are indeed successively ceasing, with the 
progress of time, to be read or known ; but the 
new supply continually brought forth is so nu- 
merous, that a person who turns his attention 
to religious reading is certain to meet, a variety 
of them. Now only suppose a man who has 



334 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

been conversant and enchanted with the works 
of eloquence, glowing poetry, finished elegance, 
or strong reasoning, to meet a number of these 
books in the outset of his more serious inquiries; 
in what light would the religion of Christ ap- 
pear to him, if he did not find some happier 
illustrations of it ? — 

There is another large class of christian 
books, which bear the marks of learning, cor- 
rectness, and an orderly understanding; and 
by a general propriety leave but little to be 
censured ; but which display no invention, no 
prominence of thought, or living vigour of 
expression ; all is flat and dry as a plain of sand. 
It is perhaps the thousandth iteration of com- 
mon-places, the listless attention to which is 
hardly an action of the mind ; you seem to un- 
derstand it all, and mechanically assent while 
you are thinking of something else. Though 
the author has a rich immeasurable field of pos- 
sible varieties of reflection and illustration around 
him, he seems doomed to tread over again the 
narrow space of ground long since trodden to 
dust, and in all his movements appears clothed 
in sheets of lead. 

There is a smaller class that might be called 
mock -eloquent writers. These saw the effect 
of brilliant expression in those works of elo- 
quence and poetry where it was dictated and 
animated by energy of thought ; and very rea- 
sonably wished that christian sentiments might 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 335 

assume a language as impressive as any sub- 
ject had ever employed to fascinate or command. 
But unfortunately, they forgot that eloquence 
resides essentially in the thought, and that no 
words can make genuine eloquence of that 
which would not be such in the plainest that 
could fully express the sense. Or probably, 
they were quite confident of the excellence 
of the thoughts that were demanding to be 
so finely sounded forth. Perhaps they con- 
cluded them to be vigorous and sublime from 
the very circumstance, that they disdained to 
show themselves in plain language. The writers 
would be but little inclined to suspect of poverty 
or feebleness the thoughts which seemed so 
naturally to be assuming, in their minds and on 
their page, such a magnificent style. A gaudy 
verbosity is always eloquence in the opinion 
of him that writes it ; but what is the effect 
on the reader?* Real eloquence strikes with 
immediate force, and leaves not the possibility 
of asking or thinking whether it be elo- 
quence ; but the sounding sentences of these 
writers leave you cool enough to examine with 
doubtful curiosity a language that seems threat- 
ening to move or astonish you, without actually 



* I should be accurate, and say, the reader of disciplined 
judgment and good taste ; for it is true enough that readers 
are not wanting, nor few, who can be taken with glare and 
bombast. 



33G ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

doing so. It is something like the case of a 
false alarm of thunder ; where a sober man, 
who is not apt to startle at sounds, looks out to 
see whether it be not the rumbling of a cart. 
Very much at your ease, you contrast the pomp 
of the expression with the quality of the 
thoughts ; and then read on for amusement, or 
cease to read from disgust. In a serious hour, 
indeed, the feelings both of amusement and dis- 
gust give place to the regret, that it should be 
in the power of bad writing to bring the most 
important subjects in danger of something worse 
than failing to interest. The unpleasing effect 
it has on your own mind will lead you to appre- 
hend its having a very injurious one on many 
others. 

A principal device in the fabrication of this 
style, is, to multiply epithets, dry epithets, laid 
on the surface, and into which no vitality of the 
sentiment is found to circulate. You may take 
a number of the words out of each page, and 
find that the sense is neither more nor less for 
your having cleared the composition of these 
epithets of chalk of various colours, with which 
the tame thoughts had submitted to be dappled 
and made fine. 

Under the denomination of mock-eloquence 
may also be placed the mode of writing which 
endeavours to excite the passions, not by pre- 
senting striking ideas of the object of pas- 
sion, but by the appearance of an emphatical 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 337 

enunciation of the writer's own feelings concern- 
ing it. You are not made to perceive how the 
thing itself has the most interesting claims on 
your heart ; but are required to be affected 
in mere sympathy with the author, who at- 
tempts your feelings by frequent exclamations, 
and perhaps by an incessant application to his 
fellow-mortals, or to their Redeemer, of all 
the appellations and epithets of passion, and 
sometimes of a kind of passion not appropriate 
to the object. To this last great Object, espe- 
cially, such forms of expression are occasionally 
applied, as must excite a revolting emotion in a 
man who feels that he cannot meet the same 
being at once on terms of adoration and of 
caressing equality. 

It would be going beyond my purpose, to 
carry my remarks from the literary merits, to 
the moral and theological characteristics, of 
christian books ; else a very strange account 
could be given of the injuries which the gospel 
has suffered from its friends. You might often 
meet with a systematic writer, in whose hands 
the whole wealth, and variety^ and magnifi- 
cence, of revelation, shrink into a meagre list 
of doctrinal points, and who will let no verse 
in the Bible tell its meaning, or presume to have 
one, till it has taken its stand by one of those 
points. You may meet with a christian polemic, 
who seems to value the arguments for evan- 
gelical truth as an assassin values his dagger, 

z 



33S ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

and for the same reason ; with a descanter 
on the invisible world, who makes you think of 
a popish cathedral, and from the vulgarity of 
whose illuminations you are glad to escape into 
the solemn twilight of faith ; or with a grim 
zealot for such a theory of the divine attributes 
and government, as seems to delight in repre- 
senting the Deity as a dreadful king of furies, 
whose dominion is overshaded with vengeance, 
whose music is the cries of victims, and whose 
glory requires to be illustrated by the ruin of 
his creation. 

It is quite unnecessary to say, that the list 
of excellent christian writers would be very 
considerable. But as to the vast mass of 
books that would, by the consenting adjudg- 
ment of all men of liberal cultivation, remain 
after this deduction, one cannot help deploring 
the effect which they must have had on un- 
known thousands of readers. It would seem 
beyond all question that books which, though 
even asserting the essential truths of Christi- 
anity, yet utterly preclude the full impression 
of its character ; which exhibit its claims on 
admiration and affection with insipid feeble- 
ness of sentiment ; or which cramp its simple 
majesty into an artifical form at once distorted 
and mean ; must be seriously prejudicial to the 
influence of this sacred subject, though it be 
admitted that many of them have sometimes 
imparted a measure both of instruction and 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 339 

of consolation. This they might do, and yet at 
the same time convey extremely contracted and 
inadequate ideas of the subject.* There are a 
great many of them into which an intelligent 
christian cannot look without rejoicing that they 
were not the books from which he received his 
impressions of the glory of his religion. There 
are many which nothing would induce him, 
even though he did not materially differ from 
them in the leading articles of his belief, to put 
into the hands of an inquiring young person ; 
which he would be sorry and ashamed to see on 
the table of an infidel ; and some of which he 
regrets to think may still contribute to keep 
down the standard of religious taste, if I may so 
express it, among the public instructors of man- 
kind. On the whole it would appear, that a 
profound veneration for Christianity w r ould in- 
duce the wish, that, after a judicious selection of 
books had been made, the Christians also had 
their Caliph Omar, and their General Amrou. 

* It is true enough that on every other subject, on which 
a multitude of books have been written, there must have 
been many which in a literary sense were bad. But I cannot 
help thinking that the number coming under this description, 
bear a larger proportion to the excellent ones in the religious 
department than any other. One chief cause of this has 
been, the mistake by which many good men, professionally 
employed in religion, have deemed their respectable mental 
competence to the office of public speaking, the proof of 
an equal competence to a work which is subjected to much 
severer literary and intellectual laws. 

z2 



340 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 



LETTER V. 



The injurious causes which I have thus far 
considered, are associated immediately with the 
object, and, by misrepresenting it, render it less 
acceptable to refined taste ; but there are others, 
which operate by perverting the very principles 
of this taste itself, so as to put it in antipathy to 
the religion of Christ, even though presented in 
its own full and genuine character, cleared of all 
these associations. I shall remark chiefly on 
one of these causes. 

I fear it is incontrovertible, that what is 
denominated Polite Literature, the grand school 
in which taste acquires its laws and refined 
perceptions, and in which are formed, much 
more than under any higher austerer discipline, 
the moral sentiments, is, for the far greater 
part, hostile to the religion of Christ ; partly, by 
introducing insensibly a certain order of opinions 
unconsonant, or at least not identical, with the 
principles of that religion ; and still more, by 
training the feelings to a habit alien from its 
spirit. And in this assertion, I do not refer 
to writers palpably irreligious, who have laboured 
and intended to seduce the passions into vice, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 341 

or the judgment into the rejection of divine 
truth ; but to the general community of those 
elegant and ingenious authors who are read and 
admired by the christian world, held essential to 
a liberal education and to the progressive accom- 
plishment of the mind in subsequent life, and 
studied often without an apprehension, or even 
a thought, of their injuring the views and temper 
of spirits advancing, with the New Testament 
for their chief instructor and guide, into another 
world. 

It is modern literature that I have more parti- 
cularly in view ; at the same time, it is obvious 
that the writings of heathen antiquity have con- 
tinued to operate till now, in the very presence 
and sight of Christianity, with their own proper 
influence, a correctly heathenish influence, on 
the minds of many who have never thought of 
denying or doubting the truth of that religion. 
This is just as if an eloquent pagan priest had 
been allowed constantly to accompany our Lord 
in his ministry, and had divided with him the 
attention and interest of his disciples, counter- 
acting, of course, as far as his efforts were suc- 
cessful, the doctrine and spirit of the Teacher 
from heaven.* 



* It is however no part of my object in these letters to 
remark on the influence, in modern times, of the fabulous 
religion that infested the ancient works of genius. That 
influence is at the present time, I should think, extremely 



342 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

The few observations which the subject may 
require to be made on ancient literature, will be 
directed to the part of it most immediately 
descriptive of what may be called human reality, 
representing character, sentiment, and action. 
For it will be allowed, that the purely specula- 
tive part of that literature has in a great mea- 
sure ceased to interfere with the intellectual 
discipline of modern times. It obtains too little 
attention, and too little deference, to contribute 
materially to the formation of the mental habits, 
which are adverse to the christian doctrines and 
spirit. Divers learned and fanatical devotees 
to antiquity and paganism, have indeed made 

small, from the fables being so stale : all readers are suffici- 
ently tired of Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, and the rest. As 
long however as they could be of the smallest service, they 
were piously retained by the christian poets of this and other 
countries, who are now under the necessity of seeking out 
for some other mythology, the northern or the eastern, to 
support the languishing spirit of poetry. Even the ugly 
pieces of wood, worshipped in the South Sea islands, will 
probably at last receive names that may more commodiously 
hitch into verse, and be invoked to adorn and sanctify the 
belles lettres of the next century. The Mexican abomina- 
tions and infernalities have already received from us their 
epic tribute. The poet has no reason to fear that the supply 
of gods may fail ; it is at the same time a pity,, one thinks, 
that a creature so immense should have been placed in a 
world so small as this, where all nature, all history, all 
morals, all true religion, and the whole resources of innocent 
fiction, are too little to furnish materials enough for the wants 
and labours of his genius. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 343 

some effort to recall the long departed venera- 
tion for the dreams and subtleties of ancient 
philosophy. But they might with as good a 
prospect of success recommend the building of 
temples or a pantheon, and the revival of the 
institutions of idolatrous worship. The greater 
number of intelligent, and even learned men, 
would feel but little regret in consigning the 
largest proportion of that philosophy to ob- 
livion ; unless they may be supposed to like it 
as heathenism more than they admire it as 
wisdom ; or unless their pride would wish to 
retain a reminiscence of it for contrast to their 
own more rational philosophizing. 

The ancient speculations of the religious 
order include indeed some splendid ideas re- 
lating to a Supreme Being ; but these ideas 
impart no attraction to that immensity of inane 
and fantastic follies from the chaos of which 
they stand out, as of nobler essence and origin. 
For the most part they probably were tra- 
ditionary remains of divine communications to 
man in the earliest ages. A few of them were, 
possibly, the utmost efforts of human intellect, 
at some happy moments excelling itself. But 
in whatever proportions they be referred to the 
one origin or the other, they stand so dis- 
tinguished from the accumulated multifarious 
vanities of pagan speculation on the subject of 
Deity, that they throw contempt on those 
speculations. They throw contempt on the 



344 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

greatest part of the theological dogmas and 
fancies of even the very philosophers who would 
cite and applaud them. They rather direct our 
contemplation and affection toward a religion 
divinely revealed, than obtain any degree of 
favour for those notions of the Divinity, which 
sprung and indefinitely multiplied from a melan- 
choly combination of ignorance and depraved 
imagination. As to the apparent analogy be- 
tween certain particulars in the pagan religions, 
and some of the most specific articles of Christi- 
anity, those notions are presented in such fan- 
tastic, and varying, and often monstrous shapes, 
that they can be of no prejudice to the christian 
faith, either by pre-occupying in our minds the 
place of the christian doctrines, or by indis- 
posing us to admit them, or by perverting our 
conception of them. 

As to the ancient metaphysical speculation, 
whatever may be the tendency of metaphysical 
study in general, or of the particular systems of 
modern philosophers, as affecting the cordial 
and simple admission of christian doctrines, the 
ancient metaphysics may certainly be pro- 
nounced inoperative and harmless. If it were 
possible to analyze the mass of what may be 
termed our effective literature, so as to ascertain 
what elements and interfusions in it have been 
of influential power, and in what respective 
proportions, in forming our habits of thinking 
and feeling, it is probable that a very small 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 345 

share would be found derived from the ideal 
theories of the old philosophers. It is probable 
also, that in future not one of a thousand men, 
cultivated in a respectable degree, will ever take 
the trouble of a resolute and persisting effort 
to master those speculations. Besides the too 
prevailing and still increasing indisposition to 
metaphysical study in any school, there is a 
settled conviction that those speculations were 
baseless and useless, and that whoever aspires 
to the high and abstracted wisdom must learn 
it from the later philosophers. And as the only 
thing we can seek and value in pure abstracted 
speculations is truth, when the persuasion of 
their truth is gone their attraction and influence 
are extinct. That which could please the 
imagination or interest the affections, might in 
a considerable degree continue to please and 
interest them, though convicted of much fallacy. 
But that which is too subtile and intangible to 
please the imagination, loses all its power when 
it is rejected by the judgment. This is the 
predicament to which time has reduced the 
metaphysics of the old philosophers. The cap- 
tivation of their systems seems almost as far 
withdrawn from us as the songs of their Syrens, 
or the enchantments of Medea. 

While these thin speculations have been sus- 
pended in air, taking all the forms and colours 
of clouds or rainbows, meteors or fogs, the 
didactic morality of some of the ancient philo- 



346 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

sophers, faithfully keeping to the solid ground 
of human interests, has doubtless had a consi- 
derable influence on the moral sentiments of 
cultivated men, progressively on to the present 
time. A certain quality, derived from it into 
literature, has perpetuated its operation indi- 
rectly on many who are not conversant with it 
immediately at its origin. But it may have a 
considerable direct influence on those who are 
in acquaintance with the great primary moralists 
themselves. After a long detention among the 
vagaries and monsters of mythology, or a be- 
wildered adventure in the tenebrious and fan- 
tastic region of ancient metaphysics, in chase of 
that truth which the pursuer sometimes thinks, 
though doubtfully, that he sees, but which still 
eludes him, the student of antiquity is gratified 
at meeting with a sage who leads him among 
interesting realities, and discourses to him in 
plain and impressive terms of direct instruction 
concerning moral principles and the means of 
happiness. And since it is necessarily the sub- 
stantial object of this instruction to enforce 
virtue, excellence, goodness, he feels little ap- 
prehension of any vitiating effect on his moral 
sentiments. He entirely forgets that moral 
excellence, or virtue, has been defined and en- 
forced by another authority ; and that though 
a large portion of the scheme must be, as matter 
of practice, mainly the same in the dictates of 
that authority, and in the writings of Epictetus, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 347 

or Cicero, or Antoninus, yet there is a specific 
difference of substance in certain particulars, and 
a most important one in the principles that con- 
stitute the general basis. While he is admiring 
the beauty of virtue as displayed by one accom- 
plished moralist, and its lofty independence as 
exhibited by another, he is not admonished to 
suspect that any thing in their sentiments, or 
his animated coalescence with them, can be 
wrong. 

But the part of ancient literature which has 
had incomparably the greatest influence on the 
character of cultivated minds, is that which has 
turned, if I may so express it, moral sentiments 
into real beings and interesting companions, by 
displaying the life and actions of eminent indi- 
viduals. A few of the personages of fiction are 
also to be included. The captivating spirit 
of Greece and Rome dwells in the works of 
the biographers ; in so much of the history as 
might, properly be called biography, from it's 
fixing the whole attention and interest on a few 
signal names ; and in the works of the principal 
poets. 

No one, I suppose, will deny, that both the 
characters and the sentiments, which are the 
favourites of the poet and the historian, become 
the favourites also of the admiring reader ; for 
this would be a virtual denial of the excellence 
of the performance, in point of eloquence or 
poetic spirit. It is the high test and proof of 



348 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

genius that a writer can render his subject in- 
teresting to his readers, not merely in a general 
way, but in the very same manner in which it 
interests himself. If the great works of anti- 
quity had not this power, they would long since 
have ceased to charm. We could not long 
tolerate what caused a revolting of our moral 
feelings, while it was designed to please them. 
But if their characters and sentiments really do 
thus fascinate the heart, how far will this influ- 
ence be coincident with the spirit and with the 
design of Christianity ? * 

Among the poets, I shall notice only the two 
or three pre-eminent ones of the Epic class. 
Homer, you know, is the favourite of the whole 
civilized world ; and it is many centuries since 
there needed one additional word of homage to 
the prodigious genius displayed in the Iliad. 
The object of inquiry is, what kind of predis- 
position will be formed toward Christianity in a 
young and animated spirit, that learns to. glow 
with enthusiasm at the scenes created by the 
poet, and to indulge an ardent wish, which that 

* It may be noticed here that a great part of what could 
be said on heathen literature as opposed to the religion of 
Christ, must necessarily refer to the peculiar moral spirit of 
that religion. It would border on the ridiculous to represent 
the martial enthusiasm of ancient historians and poets as 
counteracting the peculiar doctrines of the gospel, meaning 
by the term those dictates of truth that do not directly 
involve moral distinctions. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 349 

enthusiasm will probably awaken, for the possi- 
bility of emulating some of the principal cha- 
racters. Let this susceptible youth, after having 
mingled and burned in imagination among 
heroes, whose valour and anger flame like 
Vesuvius, who wade in blood, trample on dying 
foes, and hurl defiance against earth and hea- 
ven ; let him be led into the company of Jesus 
Christ and his disciples, as displayed by the 
evangelists, with whose narrative, I will suppose, 
he is but slightly acquainted before. What 
must he, what can he, do with his feelings in 
this transition ? He will find himself flung as 
far as " from the centre to the utmost pole ;" 
and one of these two opposite exhibitions of 
character will inevitably excite his aversion. 
Which of them is that likely to be, if he is 
become thoroughly possessed with the Homeric 
passions ? 

Or if, reversing the order, you will suppose a 
person to have first become profoundly inte- 
rested by the New Testament, and to have 
acquired the spirit of the Saviour of the world, 
while studying the evangelical history ; with 
what sentiments will he come forth from con- 
versing with heavenly mildness, weeping bene- 
volence, sacred purity, and the eloquence of 
divine wisdom, to enter into a scene of such 
actions and characters, and to hear such max- 
ims of merit and glory, as those of Homer ? 
He would be still more confounded by the 



350 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

transition, had it been possible for him to have 
entirely escaped that deep depravation of feeling 
which can think of crimes and miseries with 
little emotion, and which we have all acquired 
from viewing the prominent portion of the 
world's history as composed of scarcely any 
thing else. He would find the mightiest strain 
of poetry employed to represent ferocious cou- 
rage as the greatest of virtues, and those who 
do not possess it as worthy of their fate, to be 
trodden in the dust. He will be taught, at 
least it will not be the fault of the poet if he 
be not taught, to forgive a heroic spirit for 
finding the sweetest luxury in insulting dying 
pangs, and imagining the tears and despair of 
distant relations. He will be incessantly called 
upon to worship revenge, the real divinity of 
the Iliad, in comparison of which the Thunderer 
of Olympus is but a subaltern pretender to 
power. He will be taught that the most 
glorious and enviable life is that, to which the 
greatest number of other lives are made a sacri- 
fice ; and that it is noble in a hero to prefer 
even a short life attended by this felicity, to a 
long one which should permit a longer life also 
to others. The terrible Achilles, a being whom, 
if he had really existed, it had been worth a 
temporary league of the tribes then called 
nations to reduce to the quietness of a dungeon 
or a tomb, is rendered interesting even amidst 
the horrors of revenge and destruction, by the 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 351 

intensity of his affection for his friend, by the 
melancholy with which he appears in the funeral 
scene of that friend, by one momentary instance 
of compassion, and by his solemn references to 
his own impending and inevitable doom. A 
reader who has even passed beyond the juvenile 
ardour of life, feels himself interested, in a 
manner that excites at intervals his own sur- 
prise, in the fate of this fell exterminator ; and 
he wonders, and he wishes to doubt, whether 
the moral that he is learning, be, after all, 
exactly no other than that the grandest employ- 
ment of a great spirit is the destruction of 
human creatures, so long as revenge, ambition, 
or even caprice, may choose to regard them 
under an artificial distinction, and call them 
enemies. But this, my dear friend, is the real 
and effective moral of the Iliad, after all that 
critics have so gravely written about lessons of 
union, or any other subordinate moral instruc- 
tions, which they discover or imagine in the 
work. Who but critics ever thought or cared 
about any such drowsy lessons 1 Whatever is 
the chief and grand impression made by the 
whole work on the ardent minds which are 
most susceptible of the influence of poetry, that 
shows the real moral ; and Alexander, and 
Charles XII. through the medium of "Mace- 
donia's madman," correctly received the genuine 
inspiration. 

If it be said, that such works stand on the 



352 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

same ground, except as to the reality or accu- 
racy of the facts, with an eloquent history, 
which simply exhibits the actions and characters, 
I deny the assertion. The actions and charac- 
ters are presented in a manner which prevents 
their just impression, and empowers them to 
make an opposite one. A transforming magic 
of genius displays a number of atrocious savages 
in a hideous slaughter-house of men, as demi- 
gods in a temple of glory. No doubt an 
eloquent history might be so written as to give 
the same aspect to such men, and such opera- 
tions ; but that history would deserve to be 
committed to the flames. A history that should 
give a faithful representation of miseries and 
slaughter, would set no one, who had not at- 
tained the last depravation, on fire to imitate the 
principal actors. It would excite in a degree 
the same emotion as the sight of a field of dead 
and dying men after a battle is over ; a sight at 
which the soul would shudder and revolt, and 
earnestly wish that this might be the last time 
the sun should behold such a spectacle : but 
the tendency of the Homeric poetry, and of a 
great part of epic poetry in general, is to in- 
sinuate the glory of repeating such a tragedy. 
I therefore ask again, how it would be possible 
for a man whose mind was first completely 
assimilated to the spirit of Jesus Christ, to read 
such a work without a most vivid antipathy to 
what he perceived to be the moral spirit of the 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 353 

poet ? And if it were not too strange a sup- 
position, that the most characteristic parts of 
the Iliad had been read in the presence and 
hearing of our Lord, and by a person animated 
by a fervid sympathy with the work — do you 
not instantly imagine Him expressing the most 
emphatical condemnation ? Would not the 
reader have been made to know, that in the 
spirit of that book he could never become a 
disciple and a friend of the Messiah ? But then, 
if he believed this declaration, and were serious 
enough to care about being the disciple and 
friend of the Messiah, would he not have 
deemed himself extremely unfortunate to have 
been seduced, through the pleasures of taste 
and imagination, into habits of feeling which 
rendered it impossible, till their predominance 
should be destroyed, for him to receive the 
only true religion, and the only Redeemer of the 
world ? To show hozv impossible it would be, 
I wish I may be pardoned for making another 
strange and indeed a most monstrous suppo- 
sition, namely, that Achilles, Diomede, Ulysses, 
and Ajax had been real persons, living in the 
time of our Lord, and had become his disciples, 
and yet, (excepting the mere exchange of the 
notions of mythology for christian opinions,) 
had retained entire the state of mind with which 
their poet has exhibited them. It is instantly 
perceived that Satan, Beelzebub, and Moloch 
might as consistently have been retained in 

A A 



354 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

heaven. But here the question comes to a 
point : if these great examples of glorious cha- 
racter pretending to coalesce with the tran- 
scendent Sovereign of virtues, would have been 
probably the most enormous incongruity exist- 
ing, or that ever had existed, in the creation, 
what harmony can there be between a man 
who has acquired a considerable degree of 
congeniality with the spirit of these heroes, 
and that paramount Teacher and Pattern of 
excellence ? And who will assure me that the 
enthusiast for heroic poetry does not acquire a 
degree of this congeniality ? But unless I can 
be so assured, I necessarily persist in asserting 
the noxiousness of such poetry. 

Yet the work of Homer is, notwithstanding, 
the book which christian poets have translated, 
which christian divines have edited and com- 
mented on with pride, at which christian ladies 
have been delighted to see their sons kindle 
into rapture, and which forms an essential part 
of the course of a liberal education, over all 
those countries on which the gospel shines. 
And who can tell how much that passion for war 
which, from the universality of its prevalence, 
might seem inseparable from the nature of man, 
may have been, in the civilized world, reinforced 
by the enthusiastic admiration with which young- 
men have read Homer, and similar poets, whose 
genius transforms what is, and ought always to 
appear purely horrid, to an aspect of grandeur ? 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 355 

Should it be asked, What ought to be the prac- 
tical consequence of such observations ? I may 
surely answer that I cannot justly be required 
to assign that consequence. I cannot be re- 
quired to do more than exhibit in a simple light 
an important point of truth. If such works 
do really impart their own spirit to the mind 
of an admiring reader, and if this spirit be 
totally hostile to that of Christianity, and if 
Christianity ought really and in good faith to 
be the supreme regent of all moral feeling, 
then it is evident that the Iliad, and all books 
which combine the same tendency with great 
poetical excellence, are among the most mis- 
chievous things on earth. There is but little 
satisfaction, certainly, in illustrating the opera- 
tion of evils without proposing any adequate 
method of contending with them. But in the 
present case, I really do not see what a serious 
observer of the character of mankind can offer. 
To wish that the works of Homer, and some 
other great authors of antiquity, should cease 
to be read, is just as vain as to wish they had 
never been written. As to the far greater 
number of readers, it were equally in vain to 
wish that pure christian sentiments might be 
sufficiently recollected, and loved, to accompany 
the study, and constantly prevent the injurious 
impression, of the works of pagan genius. The 
few maxims of Christianity to which the student 
may have assented without thought, and for 
a a 2 



35 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

which he has but little veneration, will but 
feebly oppose the influence ; the spirit of Ho- 
mer will vanquish as irresistibly as his Achilles 
vanquished. It is also most perfectly true, that 
as long as pride, ambition, and vindictiveness, 
hold so mighty a prevalence in the character 
and in the nature of our species, they would 
still amply display themselves, though the sti- 
mulus of heroic poetry were withdrawn, by the 
annihilation of all those works which have in- 
vested the worst passions and the worst actions 
with a glare of grandeur. With or without the 
infections of heroic poetry, men and nations 
will continue to commit offences against one 
another, and to avenge them ; to assume an 
arrogant precedence, and account it and laud it 
as noble spirit ; to celebrate their deeds of de- 
struction, and call them glory ; to idolize the 
men who possess, and can infuse, the greatest 
share of an infernal fire ; to set at nought all 
principles of virtue and religion in favour of 
some thoughtless vicious mortal who consigns 
himself in the same achievement to fame and 
perdition ; to vaunt in triumphal entries, or 
funeral pomps, or bombastic odes, or strings of 
scalps, how far human skill and valour can sur- 
pass the powers of famine and pestilence ; men 
and nations will continue thus to act, till a 
mightier intervention from heaven shall esta- 
blish the dominion of Christianity. In that 
better season, perhaps the great works of ancient 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 357 

genius will be read in such a disposition of 
mind as can receive the intellectual improve- 
ment derivable from them, and at the same time 
as little coincide or be infected with their moral 
spirit, as in the present age we venerate their 
mythological vanities. 

In the mean time, one cannot believe that 
any man, who seriously reflects how absolutely 
the religion of Christ claims a conformity of his 
whole nature, will without regret feel himself 
animated with a class of sentiments, of which 
the habitual prevalence would be the total pre- 
clusion of Christianity. 

And it seems to show how little this religion 
is really understood, or even considered, in 
any of the countries denominated christian, 
that so many who profess to adopt it never 
once thought of guarding their own minds, and 
those of their children, against the eloquent 
seductions of so opposite a spirit. Probably 
they would be more intelligent and vigilant, if 
any other interest than that of their professed 
religion were endangered. But a thing which 
injures them only in that concern, is sure to 
meet with all possible indulgence. 

With respect to religious parents and pre- 
ceptors, whose children and pupils are to receive 
that liberal education which must inevitably 
include the study of these great works, it will 
be for them to accompany the youthful readers 
throughout, with an effort to show them, in 



358 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

the most pointed manner, the inconsistency of 
many of the sentiments, both with moral recti- 
tude in general, and with the special dictates 
of Christianity. And in order to give the requi- 
site force to those dictates, it will be an im- 
portant duty to illustrate to them the amiable 
tendency, and to prove the awful authority, 
of this dispensation of religion. This careful 
effort will often but partially prevent the mis- 
chief; but it seems to be all that can be done. 

Virgil's work is a kind of lunar reflection of 
the ardent effulgence of Homer ; surrounded, 
if I may extend the figure, with a beautiful 
halo of elegance and tenderness. So much 
more refined an order of sentiment might have 
rendered the heroic character far more, attrac- 
tive, to a mind that can soften as well as glow, 
if there had actually been a hero in the poem. 
But none of the personages intended for heroes 
take hold enough of the reader's feelings to 
assimilate them in moral temper. No fiction 
or history of human characters and actions will 
ever powerfully transfuse its spirit, without some 
one or some very few individuals of signal pe- 
culiarity or greatness, to concentrate and em- 
body the whole energy of the work. There 
would be no danger therefore of any one's be- 
coming an idolater of the god of war through 
the inspiration of the iHneid, even if a larger 
proportion of it had resounded with martial 
enterprise. Perhaps the chief counteraction to 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 35D 

christian sentftnents which I should apprehend 
to an opening susceptible mind, would be a 
depravation of its ideas concerning the other 
world, from the picturesque scenery which 
Virgil has opened to his hero in the regions of 
the dead, and the imposing images with which 
he has shaded the avenue to them. Perhaps 
also the affecting sentiments which precede the 
death of Dido, might tend to lessen, especially 
in a pensive mind, the horror of that impiety 
which would throw back with violence the 
possession of life, as if in reproach to its great 
Author, for having suffered that there should 
be unhappiness in a world where there is sin. 



LETTER VI. 

In naming Lucan, I am not unaware that an 
avowal of high admiration may hazard all credit 
for correct discernment. I must, however, con- 
fess that, in spite of his rhetorical ostentation, 
and all the offences of a too inflated style, he does 
in my apprehension greatly surpass all the other 
ancient poets in direct force of the ethical spirit ; 
and that he would have a stronger influence to 



360 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

seduce my feelings, in respect to moral great- 
ness, into a discordance from christian principles. 
His leading characters are widely different from 
those of Homer, and of an eminently superior 
order. The mighty genius of Homer appeared 
and departed in a rude age of the human mind, 
a stranger to the intellectual enlargement which 
would have enabled him to combine in his 
heroes the dignity of thought, instead of mere 
physical force, with the energy of passion. For 
want of this, they are great heroes without be- 
ing great men. They appear to you only as 
tremendous fighting and destroying animals ; a 
kind of human mammoths. The prowess of 
personal conflict is all they can understand and 
admire, and in their warfare their minds never 
reach to any of the sublimer views and results 
even of war ; their chief and final object seems 
to be the mere savage glory of fighting, and 
the annihilation of their enemies. When the 
heroes of Lucan, both the depraved and the 
nobler class, are employed in war, it seems but 
a small part of what they can do, and what they 
intend ; they have always something further and 
greater in view than to evince their valour, or to 
riot in the vengeance of victory. Ambition as 
exhibited in Pompey and Caesar seems almost 
to become a grand passion, when compared to 
the contracted and ferocious aim of Homer's 
chiefs ; while this passion, even thus elevated, 
serves to exalt by comparison the far different 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 361 

and nobler sentiments and objects of Cato and 
Brutus. The contempt of death, which in the 
heroes of the Iliad often seems like an inca- 
pacity or an oblivion of thought, is in Lucan's 
favourite characters the result, or at least the 
associate, of high philosophic spirit ; and this 
strongly contrasts their courage with that of 
Homer's warriors, which is, (according indeed 
to his own frequent similes,) the reckless dar- 
ing of wild beasts. Lucan sublimates martial 
into moral grandeur. Even if you could deduct 
from his great men all that which forms the 
specific martial display of the hero, you would 
find their greatness little diminished ; they 
would still retain their commanding and in- 
teresting aspect. The better class of them, 
amidst war itself, hate and deplore the spirit 
and destructive exploits of war. They are in- 
dignant at the vices of mankind for compelling 
their virtue into a career in which such san- 
guinary glories can be acquired. And while 
they deem it their duty to exert their courage 
in conflict for a just cause, they regard camps 
and battles as vulgar things, from which their 
thoughts often turn away into a train of solemn 
and presaging reflections, in which they ap- 
proach sometimes the most elevated sublimity. 
You have a more absolute impression of gran- 
deur from a speech of Cato, than from all the 
mighty exploits that epic poetry ever blazoned. 
The eloquence of Lucan's moral heroes does 



362 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

not consist in images of triumphs and conquests, 
but in reflections on virtue, sufferings, destiny, 
and death ; and the sentiments expressed in 
his own name have often a melancholy tinge 
which renders them irresistibly interesting. He 
might seem to have felt a presage, while mus- 
ing on the last of the Romans, that their poet 
was soon to follow them. The reader becomes 
devoted both to the poet and to these illustrious 
men ; but, under the influence of this attach- 
ment, he adopts all their sentiments, and exults 
in the sympathy ; forgetting, or unwilling, to 
reflect, whether this state of feeling be con- 
cordant with the religion of Christ, and with 
the spirit of the apostles and martyrs. The 
most captivating of Lucan's sentiments, to a 
mind enamoured of pensive sublimity, are those 
concerning death. I remember the very prin- 
ciple which I would wish to inculcate, that is, 
the necessity that a believer of the gospel should 
preserve the christian tenour of feeling predo- 
minant in his mind, and clear of incongruous 
mixture, having struck me with great force 
amidst the enthusiasm with which I read many 
times over the memorable account of Vulteius, 
the speech by which he inspired his gallant 
band with a passion for death, and the reflections 
on death with which the poet closes the episode. 
I said to myself, at the suggestion of conscience, 
What are these sentiments with which I am 
glowing ? Are these the just ideas of death ? 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 363 

Are they such as were taught by the Divine 
Author of our religion ? Is this the Spirit with 
which St. Paul approached his last hour ? And 
I felt a painful collision between this reflection 
and the passion inspired by the poet. I per- 
ceived clearly that the kind of interest which 
I felt was no less than a real adoption, for the 
time, of the very same sentiments with which 
he was animated. 

The epic poetry has been selected for the 
more pointed application of my remarks, from 
the belief that it has had a much greater in- 
fluence on the moral sentiments of succeeding 
ages than all the other poetry of antiquity, by 
means of its impressive display of individual 
great characters. And it will be admitted that 
the moral spirit of the epic poets, taken toge- 
ther, is as little in opposition to the christian 
theory of moral sentiments as that of the col- 
lective poetry of other kinds. Some just and 
fine sentiments to be found in the Greek trage- 
dies are in the tone of the best of the pagan 
didactic moralists. And they infuse themselves 
more intimately into our minds when thus com- 
ing warm in the course of passion and action, 
and speaking to us with the emphasis imparted 
by affecting and dreadful events ; but still are 
of less vivid and penetrating charm, than as 
emanating from the insulated magnificence of 
such striking and sublime individual characters 
as those of epic poetry. The mind of the 



364 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

reader does not, from those dramatic scenes, 
retain for months and years an animated re- 
collection of some personage whose name con- 
stantly recalls the sentiments which he uttered, 
or with which his conduct inspired us. The 
Greek drama is extremely deficient in both 
grand and interesting characters, in any sense 
of the epithets that should imply an impos- 
ing or a captivating moral power. Much the 
greatest number of the persons and personages 
brought on the scene are such as we care no- 
thing about, otherwise than merely on account 
of the circumstances in which we see them 
acting or suffering. With few exceptions they 
come on the stage, and go off, without pos- 
sessing us with either admiration or affection. 
When therefore the maxims or reflections which 
we hear from them have an impressive effect, 
it is less from any commanding quality in the 
persons, than from the striking, and sometimes 
portentous and fearful situations, that the sen- 
timents have their pathos. There are a few 
characters of greater power over our respect 
and our sympathies, who draw us, by virtue 
of personal qualities, into a willing communion 
with them, at times, in moral principles and 
emotions. We are relieved and gratified, after 
passing through so much wickedness, misfor- 
tune, and inane common-place moralizing, to 
be greeted with fine expressions of justice, ge- 
nerosity, and fidelity to a worthy purpose, by 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 365 

persons whom we can regard as living realiza- 
tions of such virtues. It is like finding among 
barbarous nations, (as sometimes happens,) some 
individual or two eminently and unaccountably 
above the level of their tribe, whose intelligence 
and virtues have, by the contrast and the sur- 
prise, a stronger attraction than similar qualities 
meeting us in a cultivated community. But 
the delight sometimes kindled by sentiments of 
magnanimous or gentle virtue, is exceedingly 
repressed, and often quenched, in the reader of 
the Greek drama, by the incessant intrusion of 
a hideous moral barbarism ; especially by the 
implication of the morality with an execrable 
mythology. There is an odious interference of 
" the gods," sometimes by their dissensions with 
one another perplexing and confounding the 
rules of human obligation ; often contravening 
the best intentions and efforts ; depriving virtue 
of all confidence and resource ; despising, frus- 
trating, or punishing it ; turning its exertions 
and sacrifices to vanity or disaster ; and yet 
to be the objects of devout homage, a homage 
paid with intermingled complaints and re- 
proaches, extorted from defeated or suffering 
virtue, which is trying to be better than the 
gods. Nothing can be more intensely dreary 
than the moral economy as represented in much 
of that drama. Let any one contemplate it 
as displayed for example, in the Prometheus 
Chained, or the whole stories of (Edipus and 



366 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

Orestes. On the whole I have conceded much 
in saying, that a small portion of the morality 
of that drama may have a place with that of 
the best of the didactic moralists. 

I shall not dwell long on the biography and 
history, since it will be allowed that their influ- 
ence is very nearly coincident with that of the 
epic poetry. The work of Plutarch, the chief 
of the biographers, (a work so necessary, it 
would seem, to the consolations of a christian, 
that I have read of some learned man declaring, 
and without any avowed rejection of the Bible, 
that if he were to be cast on a desert island, 
and could have one book, and but one, it should 
be this,) the work of Plutarch delineates a 
greatness partly of the same character as that 
celebrated by Homer, and partly of the more 
dignified and intellectual kind which is so com- 
manding in the great men of Lucan, several of 
whom indeed are the subjects also of the 
biographer. Various distinctions might, no 
doubt, be remarked in the impression made by 
great characters as illustrated in poetry, and 
as exposed in the plainness of historical record : 
but I am persuaded that the habits of feeling 
which will grow from admiring the one or the 
other, will be substantially the same as affecting 
the temper of the mind in regard to Christianity. 

A number of the men exhibited by the 
biographers and historians, rose so eminently 
above the general character of the human 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 367 

race, that their names have become insepa- 
rably associated with our ideas of moral great- 
ness. A thoughtful student of antiquity enters 
this majestic company with an impression of 
mystical awfulness, resembling that of Ezekiel 
in his vision. In this select and revered as- 
sembly we include only those who were distin- 
guished by elevated virtue, as well as powerful 
talents and memorable actions. Undoubtedly 
the magnificent powers and energy without 
moral excellence, so often displayed on the field 
of ancient history, compel a kind of prostration 
of the soul in the presence of men, whose 
surpassing achievements seem to silence for 
a while, and but for a while, the sense of justice 
which must execrate their ambition and their 
crimes ; but where greatness of mind seems but 
secondary to greatness of virtue, as in the 
examples of Phocion, Epaminondas, Aristides, 
Timoleon, Dion, Cimon, and several more, the 
heart applauds itself for feeling an irresistible 
captivation. This number indeed is small, 
compared with the whole galaxy of renowned 
names ; but it is large enough to fill the mind, 
and to give as venerable an impression of pagan 
greatness, as if none of its examples had been 
the heroes whose fierce brilliance lightens 
through the blackness of their depravity ; or 
the legislators, orators, and philosophers, whose 
wisdom was degraded by imposture, venality, or 
vanity. 



368 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

A most impressive part of the influence of 
ancient character on modern feelings, is derived 
from the accounts of two or three of the 
greatest philosophers, whose virtue, protesting 
and solitary in the times in which they lived, 
whose intense devotedness in the pursuit of 
wisdom, and whose occasional sublime glimpses 
of apprehension, received from beyond the 
sphere of error in which they were enclosed and 
benighted, present them to the mind with some- 
thing like the venerableness of the prophets 
of God. Among the exhibitions of this kind, it 
is unnecessary to say that Xenophon's Memoir 
of Socrates stands unrivalled and above com- 
parison. 

Sanguine spirits without number have pro- 
bably been influenced in modern times by the 
ancient history of mere heroes ; but persons of 
a reflective disposition have been incomparably 
more affected by the contemplation of those 
men whose combination of mental power with 
illustrious virtue constitutes the supreme glory 
of heathen antiquity. — And why do I deem the 
admiration of this noble display of moral ex- 
cellence pernicious to these reflective minds, in 
relation to the religion of Christ ? For the sim- 
plest possible reason ; because the principles of 
that excellence are not identical with the princi- 
ples of this religion ; as I believe every serious 
and self-observant man who has been attentive 
to them both, will have verified in his own 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 369 

experience. He has felt the animation which 
pervaded his soul, in musing on the virtues, the 
sentiments, and the great actions, of these 
dignified men, suddenly expiring, when he has 
attempted to prolong or transfer it to the vir- 
tues, sentiments, and actions, of the apostles of 
Jesus Christ. Sometimes he has, with mixed 
wonder and indignation, remonstrated with his 
own feelings, and has said, I know there is the 
highest excellence in the religion of the Mes- 
siah, and in the characters of his most magna- 
nimous followers ; and surely it is excellence 
also that attracts me to those other illustrious 
men ; why then cannot I take a full delightful 
interest in them both ? But it is in vain ; he 
finds this amphibious devotion impossible. And 
he will always find it so ; for, antecedently to 
experience, it would be obvious that the order 
of sentiments which animated the one form of 
excellence, is extremely diverse from that which 
is the vitality of the other. If the whole sys- 
tem of a christian's sentiments is required to be 
exactly adjusted to the economy of redemption, 
they must be widely different from those of 
the men, however wise or virtuous, who never 
thought or heard of the Saviour of the world ; 
else where is the peculiarity or importance of 
this new dispensation, which does however both 
avow and manifest a most signal peculiarity, 
and with which heaven has connected the signs 
and declarations of infinite importance ? If, 

B B 



370 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

again, a christian's grand object and solicitude 
is to please God, this must constitute his moral 
excellence, (even though the facts, the mere 
actions, were the same,) of a very different na- 
ture from that of the men who had not in firm 
faith any god that they cared to please, and 
whose highest glory it might possibly become, 
that they boldly differed from their deities ; 
as Lucan undoubtedly intended it as the most 
emphatical applause of Cato, that he was the 
inflexible patron and hero of the cause which 
was the aversion of the gods.* If humility is 
required as a characteristic of a christian's 
mind, he is here again placed in a state of con- 
trariety to that self-idolatry, the love of glory 
which accompanied, and was applauded as a 
virtue while it accompanied, almost all the 
moral greatness of the heathens. If a christian 
lives for eternity, and advances towards death 
with the certain expectation of judgment, and 
of a new and awful world, how different must 
be the essential quality of his serious sentiments, 
as partly created, and wholly pervaded, by this 
mighty anticipation, from the order of feeling 
of the virtuous heathens, who had no positive 
or sublime expectations beyond death. The 
interior essences, if I may so speak, of the two 
kinds of excellence, sustained or produced by 
these two systems of principles, are so different, 

* Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 371 

that they will hardly be more convertible or 
compatible in the same mind than even excel- 
lence and turpitude. — Now it appears to me 
that the enthusiasm, with which a mind of deep 
and thoughtful sensibility dwells on the history 
of sages, virtuous legislators, and the worthiest 
class of heroes of heathen antiquity, will be 
found to beguile that mind into an order of 
sentiments congenial with theirs, and therefore 
thus seriously different from the spirit and prin- 
ciples of Christianity.* It is not exactly that 
the judgment admits distinct pagan propositions, 
but the heart insensibly acquires an unison with 
many of the sentiments which imply those pro- 
positions, and are wrong unless those proposi- 
tions be right. It forgets that a different state 
of feeling, corresponding to a greatly different 
scheme of principles, is appointed by the Sove- 
reign Judge of all things as (with relation to 
us) an indispensable preparation for entering 



* Should it be pretended that, in admiring pagan excel- 
lence, the mind takes the mere facts of that excellence, 
separately from the principles, and as far as they are identical 
with the facts of christian excellence, and then, connecting 
christian principles with them, converts the whole ideally into 
a christian character before it cordially admires, I appeal to 
experience that this is not true. If it were, the mind would 
be able to turn with full complacency from an affectionate 
admiration of an illustrious heathen, to admire, in the same 
train of feeling and with still warmer emotion, the excellence 
of St. Paul ; which is not the fact. 

BB 2 



372 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

the eternal paradise ; * and that now, no moral 
distinctions, however splendid, are excellence 
in his sight, if not conformed to his declared 
standard. It slides into a persuasion that, 
under any economy, to be like one of those 
heathen examples should be a competent fitness 
for any world to which good spirits are to be 
assigned. The devoted admirer contemplates 
them as the most enviable specimens of his 
nature, and almost wishes he could have been 
one of them ; without reflecting that this would 
probably have been under the condition, among 
many other circumstances, of adoring Jupiter, 
Bacchus, or iEsculapius, and yet despising the 
deities that he adored ; and under the condition 
of being a stranger to the Son of God, and to 
all that he has disclosed and accomplished for 
the felicity of our race. It would even throw 
an ungracious chill on his ardour, if an evan- 
gelical monitor should whisper, " Remember 
Jesus Christ," and express his regret that these 
illustrious men could not have been privileged 
to be elevated into christians. If precisely the 
word " elevated " were used, the admonished 
person might have a feeling, at the instant, as 
if it were not the right word. But this state of 
mind is no less in effect than hostility to the 

* I hope none of these observations will be understood to 
insinuate the impossibility of the future happiness of virtuous 
heathens. But a question on that subject would here be out 
of place. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 373 

gospel, which these feelings are practically pro- 
nouncing to be at least unnecessary ; and there- 
fore that noblest part of ancient literature which 
tends to produce it, is inexpressibly injurious. 
It had been happy for many cultivated and 
aspiring minds, if the men whose characters 
are the moral magnificence of the classical 
history, had been such atrocious villains, that 
their names could not have been recollected 
without execration. Nothing can be more dis- 
astrous than to be led astray by eminent virtue 
and intelligence, which can give a sense of con- 
geniality with grandeur in the deviation. 

It will require a very affecting impression of 
the christian truth, a decided conception of the 
christian character, and a habit of thinking with 
sympathetic admiration of the most elevated 
class of christians, to preserve the genuine evan- 
gelical spirit amidst this ideal society with 
personages who might pardonably have been 
esteemed of the noblest form of human nature* 
if a revelation had not been received from 
heaven. Some views of this excellence it were 
in vain for a christian to forbid himself to 
admire; but he must learn to admire under a 
discriminative restriction, else the emotion in- 
volves a desertion of his cause. He must learn 
to assign these men in thought to another 
sphere, and to regard them as beings under a 
different economy with which our relations are 
dissolved; as wonderful examples of a certain 



374 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

imperfect kind of moral greatness, formed on a 
model foreign to true religion, and which is 
crumbled to dust and given to the winds. — At 
the same time, he may well, while beholding 
some of these men, deplore that if so much 
excellence could be formed on such a model, 
the sacred system which gives the acknowledged 
exemplar for his own character should not have 
far more assimilated him to heaven. — So much 
for the effect of the most interesting part of 
ancient literature. 

In the next letter I shall make some observa- 
tions on modern polite literature, in application 
of the same rule of judgment. Many of them 
must unavoidably be very analogous to those 
already made ; since the greatest number of the 
modern fine writers acquired much of the cha- 
racter of their minds from those of the ancient 
world. Probably indeed the ancients have 
exerted a much more extensive influence in 
modern times by means of the modern writers 
to whom they have communicated their moral 
spirit, than immediately by their own works. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 375 



LETTER VII. 

To a man who had long observed the influ- 
ences which tyrannize over human passions 
and opinions,, it would not perhaps have ap- 
peared strange, that when the Grand Renovator 
came on earth, and during the succeeding ages, 
a number of the men whose superior talents 
were to carry on the course of literature, and 
promote and guide the progress of the human 
mind, should reject his religion. These I have 
placed out of the question, as it is not my object 
to show the injuries done to Christianity by its 
avowed enemies. But it might have been ex- 
pected, that all the intelligent men, from that 
hour to the end of time, who should really 
admit the truth of this religion, would perceive 
the sovereignty and universality of its claims, 
feel that every thing unconsonant with it ought 
instantly to vanish from the whole system of 
approved sentiments and the whole school of 
literature, and to keep as clearly aloof as the 
Israelites from the boundary that guarded the 
sanctity of Mount Sinai. It might have been 
presumed, that all principles which the new dis- 
pensation rendered obsolete, or declared or im- 
plied to be wrong, should no more be regarded 



376 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

as belonging to the system of principles to be 
henceforward received and taught, than dead 
bodies in their graves belong to the race of 
living men. To retain or recall them would 
therefore be as offensive to the judgment, as to 
take up these bodies and place them in the 
paths of men, would be offensive to the senses ; 
and as absurd as the practice of the ancient 
Egyptians, who made their embalmed ancestors 
their companions at their festivals. It might 
have been supposed, that whatever Christianity 
had actually substituted, abolished, or supplied, 
would therefore be practically regarded by these 
believers of it as substituted, abolished, or sup- 
plied ; and that they would, in all their writings, 
be at least as careful of their fidelity in this 
great article, as an adherent to the Newtonian 
philosophy would be certain to exclude, from 
his scientific discourse, all notions that seriously 
implied the Ptolemaic or the Tychonic system 
to be true. Necessarily, a number of these 
literary believers would write on subjects so 
completely foreign to what comes within the 
cognizance of Christianity, that a pure neutrality, 
which should avoid all interference with it, 
would be all that could be claimed from them 
in its behalf; though, at the same time, one 
should feel some degree of regret, to see a man 
of enlarged mind exhausting his ability and his 
life on these foreign subjects, without devoting 
some short interval to the service of that 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 377 

which he believes to be of far surpassing 
moment.* 

But the great number who chose to write on 
subjects that come within the relations of the 
christian system,, as on the various views of 
morals, the distinctions and judgments of human 
character, and the theory of happiness, with 
almost unavoidable references sometimes to our 
connexion with Deity, to death, and to a future 
state, ought to have written every page under 
the recollection, that these subjects are not left 
free for careless or arbitrary sentiment since 

* I could not help feeling a degree of this regret in read- 
ing lately the memoirs of the admirable and estimable Sir 
William Jones. Some of his researches in Asia have inci- 
dentally served the cause of religion ; but did he think that 
nothing more remained possible to be done in service to 
Christianity, that his accomplished mind was left at leisure 
for hymns to the Hindoo gods ? Was not this even a vio- 
lation of the neutrality, and an offence, not only against the 
gospel, but against theism itself ? I know what may be said 
about personification, license of poetry, and so on ; but 
should not a worshipper of God hold himself under a solemn 
obligation to abjure all tolerance of even poetical figures that 
can seriously seem, in any way whatever, to recognise the 
pagan divinities — or abominations, as the prophets of Jeho- 
vah would have called them 1 What would Elijah have 
said to such an employment of talents in his time ? It would 
have availed little to have told him that these divinities were 
only personifications (with their appropriate representative 
idols) of objects in nature, of elements, or of abstractions. 
He would have sternly replied, And was not Baal, whose 
prophets I destroyed, the same 1 



378 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

the time that "God has spoken to us by his 
Son ;" and that the finest composition would 
be only so much eloquent impiety, if essentially 
discordant with the dictates of the New Tes- 
tament. Had this been a habitual and influen- 
tial recollection with the admired writers of 
the christian world, an ingenuous mind might 
have been conversant alternately with their 
works and those of evangelists and apostles, 
without being confounded in the conflict of 
antipathy between the inspirations of genius 
and the inspirations of heaven. 

I confine my view chiefly to the elegant 
literature of our own country. And there is 
a presumption in its favour, independently of 
actual comparison, that it is much less excep- 
tionable than the belles lettres of the other 
countries of modern Europe ; for this plain 
reason, that the extended prevalence of the 
happy light of the Reformation through almost 
the whole period of the production of our works 
of genius and taste, must necessarily, by pre- 
senting the religion of Christ in an aspect more 
true to its genuine dignity, have compelled 
from the intellectual men who did not deny 
its truth, and could not be entirely ignorant 
of its most essential properties, a kind and 
degree of respect which would not be felt by 
the same order of men in popish countries, 
whose belief in Christianity was no more than 
a deference to the authority of the church, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 379 

and whose occasional allusions or testimonies 
to it would recognise it in no higher character 
than that in which it appears as degraded into 
a superstition; so that there would be only a 
fallacious or equivocal glimmer of Christianity 
thrown occasionally on their pages of moral 
sentiment. 

In this assumption in favour of our polite 
literature,, against that of the popish countries, 
I set out of view, on both sides, that portion 
which is of directly immoral or infidel tendency ; 
since it is not at all my object to comment on 
the antichristian effect of the palpably vicious 
part of our literature, but to indicate a certain 
moral and religious insalubrity in much of that 
which, in general account, is for the most part 
tolerably accordant, and in many instances 
actively subservient, to truth and virtue. 

Going over from the vicious and irreligious 
to the directly opposite quarter, neither do 
I include in the literature on which I am 
animadverting any class of authors formally 
theological, not even the most admired sermon- 
writers in our language ; because it is probable 
that works specifically theological have not been 
admitted to constitute more than a small part 
of that school of thinking and taste, in which 
the generality of cultivated men have acquired 
the moral habitude of their minds. That school 
is composed of poets, moral philosophers, histo- 
rians, essayists, and you may add the writers of 



380 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

fiction. If the great majority of these authors 
have injured, and still injure, their pupils in 
the most important of all their interests, it is 
a very serious consideration, both in respect to 
the accountableness of the authors, and the 
final effect on their pupils. I maintain that 
they are guilty of this injury. 

On so wide a field, my dear friend, it would 
be in vain to attempt making particular re- 
ferences and selections to verify all these 
remarks. I must appeal for their truth to 
your own acquaintance with our popular fine 
writers. 

In the first place, and as a general obser- 
vation, the alleged injury has been done, to a 
great extent, by Omission, or rather it should 
be called Exclusion. I do not refer so much 
to that unworthy care, maintained through 
the works of our ingenious authors to avoid 
formally treating on any topics of an expressly 
evangelical kind, as to the absence of that 
christian tinge and modification, (rendered 
perceptible partly by a plain recognition occa- 
sionally of some great christian truth, and partly 
by a solicitous, though it were a tacit, con- 
formity to every principle of the christian 
theory,) which should pervade universally the 
sentiments regarding man as a moral being. 
Consider how small a portion of the serious 
subjects of thought can be detached from all 
connexion with the religion of Christ, without 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 381 

narrowing the scope to which he meant it to 
extend, and repelling its intervention where 
he required it should intervene. The book 
which unfolds it, has exaggerated its compre- 
hensiveness, and the first distinguished christians 
had a delusive view of it, if it does not actually 
claim to mingle its principles with the whole 
system of moral ideas, so as to give them a 
special modification ; as the principle of fire, 
interfused through the various forms and com- 
binations of the elements, contributes essentially 
to constitute that condition by which they are 
adapted to their important uses, which con- 
dition and adaptation therefore they would lose 
if that principle were no longer inherent. 

And this claim for the extensive interference 
of the christian principles, made as a require- 
ment from authority, appears to be just in 
virtue of their own nature. For they are not 
of a nature which necessarily restricts them 
to a peculiar department, like the principles 
appropriate to some of the sciences. We should 
at once perceive the absurdity of a man who 
* should be pretending to adjust all his ideas 
on general subjects according to the rules of 
geometry, and should maintain (if any man 
could do so preposterous a thing) that geo- 
metrical laws ought to be taken as the basis 
of our reasoning on politics and morals. Or, 
if this be too extreme a supposition, let any 
other class of principles, foreign to moral 



382 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

subjects, be selected, in order to show how 
absurd is the effect of an attempt to stretch 
them beyond their proper sphere, and force 
them into some connexion with ideas with 
which they have no natural relation. Let it be 
shown how such principles can in no degree 
modify the subject to which they are attempted 
to be applied, nor mingle with the reasons 
concerning it, but refuse to touch it, like mag- 
netism applied to brass. I would then show, 
on the contrary, that the christian principles 
are of a quality which puts them in relation 
with something in the nature of almost all 
serious subjects. Their introduction into those 
subjects therefore is not an arbitrary and forced 
application of them ; it is merely permitting 
their cognizance and interfusion in whatever has 
some quality of a common nature with them. 
It must be evident in a moment that the most 
general doctrines of Christianity, such as those 
of a future judgment, and immortality, have 
a direct relation with every thing that can be 
comprehended within the widest range of moral 
speculation and sentiment. It will also be 
found that the more particular doctrines, such 
as those of the moral pravity of our nature, 
an atonement made by the sacrifice of Christ, 
the interference of a special divine influence 
in renewing the human mind, and conducting 
it through the discipline for a future state, 
together with all the inferences, conditions, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 383 

and motives,, resulting from them, cannot be 
admitted and religiously regarded, without com- 
bining in numberless instances with a man's 
ideas on moral subjects. That writer must 
therefore have retired beyond the limits of 
an immense field of important and most in- 
teresting speculations, indeed beyond the limits 
of all the speculation most important to man, 
who can say that nothing in the religion of 
Christ bears, in any manner, on any part of 
his subject, any more than if he were a phi- 
losopher of Saturn. 

In thus habitually interfering and combining 
with moral sentiments and speculations, the 
christian principles will greatly modify them. 
The ideas infused from those principles, to be 
combined with the moral sentiments, will not 
appear as simply additional ideas in the train 
of thought, but as also affecting the character 
of the rest. A writer whose mind is so pos- 
sessed with the christian principles that they 
continually suggest themselves in connexion 
with his serious speculations, will unavoidably 
present a moral subject in a somewhat different 
aspect, even when he makes no express re- 
ferences to the gospel, from that in which it 
would be presented by another writer, whose 
habits of thought were clear of evangelical re- 
collections. Now in every train of thinking in 
which the recognition of those principles would 
effect this modification, it ought to be effected ; 



384 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

so that the very last idea within the compass 
of speculation which would have a different 
cast as a ray of the gospel falls, or does not 
fall, upon it, should be faithfully presented in 
that light. The christian principles cannot be 
true, without determining what shall be true 
in the mode of representing every subject in 
which there is any thing belonging to them 
by essential relation. Obviously, as far as the 
gospel can go, and does by such relation with 
things claim to go, with a modifying action, 
it cannot be a matter of indifference whether 
it do go or not ; for nothing on which its appli- 
cation would have this effect, would be equally 
right as so modified and as not so modified. 
That which is made precisely correct by this 
qualified condition, must therefore, separately 
from it, be incorrect. He who has sent a re- 
velation to declare the theory of sacred truth, 
and to order the relations of all moral senti- 
ment with that truth, cannot give his sanction 
at once to this final constitution, and to that 
which refuses to be conformed to it. He there- 
fore disowns that which disowns the religion of 
Christ. And what he disowns he condemns ; 
thus placing all moral sentiments in the same 
predicament, with regard to the christian eco- 
nomy, in which Jesus Christ placed his con- 
temporaries, " He that is not with me is against 
me." — The order of ideas dissentient from 
the christian system, presumes the existence, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 385 

or attempts the creation, of some other 
economy. 

Now, in casting a recollective glance over 
our elegant literature, as far as I am ac- 
quainted with it, I cannot help thinking that 
much the greater part falls under this con- 
demnation. After a comparatively small num- 
ber of names and books are excepted, what are 
called the British Classics, with the addition 
of very many works of great literary merit that 
have not quite attained that rank, present an 
immense vacancy of christianized sentiment. 
The authors do not give signs of having ever 
deeply studied Christianity, or of having been 
aware that any such thing is a duty. What- 
ever has strongly occupied a man's attention, 
affected his feelings, and filled his mind with 
ideas, will even unintentionally show itself in 
the train and cast of his discourse ; these writers 
do not in this manner betray that their faculties 
have been occupied and interested by the special 
views unfolded in the evangelic dispensation. 
Of their coming from the contemplation of these 
views you discover no notices analogous, for 
instance, to those which appear in the writing 
or discourse of a man, who has been passing 
some time amidst the wonders of Rome or 
Egypt, and who shows you, by almost uncon- 
scious allusions and images occurring in his 
language even on other subjects, how pro- 
foundly he has been interested in beholding 

c c 



386 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

triumphal arches, temples, pyramids, and ceme- 
teries. Their minds are not naturalized, if I 
may so speak, to the images and scenery of the 
kingdom of Christ, or to that kind of light 
which the gospel throws on all objects. They 
are somewhat like the inhabitants of those 
towns within the vast salt mines of Poland, 
who, seeing every object in their region by 
the light of lamps and candles only, have in 
their conversation hardly any expressions de- 
scribing things in such aspects as never appear 
but under the lights of heaven. You might 
observe, the next time that you open one of 
these works, how far you may read, without 
meeting with an idea of such a nature, or so 
expressed, as could not have been unless Jesus 
Christ had come into the world;* though the 
subject in hand may be one of those which he 
came in a special manner to illuminate, and to 
enforce on the mind by new and most cogent 
arguments. And where so little of the light 
and rectifying influence of these communications 
has been admitted into the habits of thought, 
there will be very few cordially reverential and 
animated references to the great Instructor 
himself. These will perhaps occur not oftener 
than a traveller in some parts of Africa, or 

* Except perhaps in respect to humanity and benevolence, 
on which subject his instructions have improved the senti- 
ments of infidels themselves, in spite of the rejection of their 
divine authority. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 387 

Arabia, comes to a spot of green vegetation in 
the desert. You might have read a consider- 
able number of volumes, without becoming 
clearly apprised of the existence of the dispen- 
sation, or that such a sublime Minister of it 
had ever appeared among men. And you might 
have diligently read, for several years, and 
through several hundred volumes, without dis- 
covering its nature or importance, or that the 
writers, when alluding to it, acknowledged any 
peculiar and essential importance as belonging 
to it. You would only have conjectured it to 
be a scheme of opinions and discipline which had 
appeared in its day, as many others had ap- 
peared, and left us, as the others have left us, 
to follow our speculations very much in our 
own way, taking from those schemes, indiffe- 
rently, any notions that we may approve, and 
facts or fictions that we may admire. 

You would have supposed that these writers 
had heard of one Jesus Christ, as they had 
heard of one Confucius, as a teacher whose 
instructions are admitted to contain many ex- 
cellent things, and to whose system a liberal 
mind will occasionally advert, well pleased to 
see China, Greece, and Judea, as well as Eng- 
land, producing their philosophers, of various 
degrees and modes of illumination, for the 
honour of their respective countries and periods, 
and for the concurrent promotion of human 
intelligence. All the information which they 

cc 2 



388 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

would have supplied to your understanding, 
and all the conjectures to which they might 
have excited your curiosity, would have left 
you, if not instructed from other sources, to 
meet the real religion itself, when at length 
disclosed to you, as a thing of which you had 
but slight recognition, further than its name ; 
as a wonderful novelty. How little you would 
have expected, from their literary and ethical 
glimpses, to find the case to be, that the system 
so insignificantly and carelessly acknowledged 
in the course of their fine sentiments, is the 
actual and sole economy by the provisions of 
which their happiness can be secured, by the 
laws of which they will be judged, which has 
declared the relations of man with his Creator, 
and specified the exclusive ground of accept- 
ance ; which is therefore of infinite consequence 
to you, and to them, and to all their readers, 
as fixing the entire theory of the condition and 
destinies of man on the final principles, to which 
all theories and sentiments are solemnly re- 
quired to be " brought into obedience." 

Now, if the fine spirits, who have thus pre- 
served an ample, rich, diversified, crowded 
province of our literature, clear of evangelical 
intrusion, are really the chief instructors of 
persons of taste, and form, from early life, their 
habits of feeling and thought, the natural result 
must be a state of mind very uncongenial with 
the gospel. Views habitually presented to the 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 389 

mind in its most susceptible periods, and during 
the prolonged course of its improvements, in 
the varied forms and lights of sublimity and 
beauty, with every fascination of the taste, in- 
genuity, and eloquence, which it has admired 
still more each year as its faculties have ex- 
panded, will have become the settled order of 
its ideas. And it will feel the same complacency 
in this intellectual order, that we feel, as in- 
habitants of the material world, in the great 
arrangement of nature, in the green blooming 
earth, and the splendid hemisphere of heaven. 



LETTER VIII. 



It will be proper to specify, somewhat more 
distinctly, several of the particulars in which 
I consider the majority of our fine writers as at 
variance with the tenour of the christian reve- 
lation, and therefore beguiling their readers 
into a complacency in an order of sentiments 
that sometimes virtually, and sometimes directly, 
disowns it. 

One thing extremely obvious to remark is, 
that the good man, the man of virtue, who is 
necessarily coming often in view in the volumes 



390 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

of these writers, is not a christian. His cha- 
racter could have been formed though the 
christian revelation had never been opened on 
the earth, or though the New Testament had 
perished "ages since ; and it might have been a 
fine spectacle, but of no striking peculiarity. It 
has no such complexion and aspect as would 
have appeared foreign and unaccountable in the 
absence of the christian truth, and have excited 
wonder what it should bear relation to, and on 
what model, or in what school, such a confor- 
mation of principles and feelings could have 
taken its consistence. Let it only be said, that 
this man of virtue had been conversant whole 
years with such oracles and examples as 
Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Antoninus, and Seneca, 
selecting what in any of them appeared the 
wisest or best, and all would be explained; 
there would be nothing to suggest the question, 
" But if so, with whom has he conversed since, 
to lose so strangely the proper character of his 
school, under the broad impression of some 
other mightier influence?" 

The good man of our polite literature never 
talks with affectionate devotion of Christ, as 
the great High Priest of his profession, as the 
exalted friend and lord, whose injunctions are 
the laws of his virtues, whose work and sacrifice 
are the basis of his hopes, whose doctrines guide 
and awe his reasonings, and whose example is 
the pattern which he is earnestly aspiring to 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 391 

resemble. The last intellectual and moral de- 
signations in the world by which it would occur 
to you to describe him, would be those by which 
the apostles so much exulted to be recognized, 
a disciple, and a servant, of Jesus Christ ; nor 
could you imagine him as at all gratified by 
being so described. You do not hear him ex- 
press, that he accounts the habitual remem- 
brance of Christ essential to the nature of that 
excellence which he is cultivating. He rather 
seems, with the utmost coolness of choice, 
adopting virtue as according with the dignity 
of a rational agent, than to be in the least 
degree impelled to the high attainment by any 
relations with the Saviour of the world. 

If you suppose a person of such character to 
have fallen into the company of St. Paul, you 
can easily imagine the total want of congeni- 
ality. Though both avowedly devoted to truth, 
to virtue, and perhaps to religion, the difference 
in the cast of their sentiments would have been 
as great as that between the physical consti- 
tution and habitudes of a native of the country 
at the equator, and those of one from the 
arctic regions. Would not that determination 
of the apostle's mind, by which there was a con- 
tinual intervention of ideas concerning one great 
object, in all subjects, places, and times, have 
appeared to this man of virtue and wisdom in- 
conceivably mystical ? In what manner would 
he have listened to the emphatical expressions 



392 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

respecting the love of Christ constraining us, 
living not to ourselves, but to him that died for 
us and rose again, counting all things but loss 
for the knowledge of Christ, being ardent to 
win Christ and be found in him, and trusting 
that Christ should be magnified in our body, 
whether by life or by death ? Perhaps St. 
Paul's energy of temperament, evidently com- 
bined with a vigorous intellect, might have 
awed him into silence. But amidst that silence, 
he must have decided, in order to defend his 
self-complacency, that the apostle's mind had 
fallen, notwithstanding its strength, under the 
dominion of an irrational association ; for he 
would have been conscious that no such ideas 
had ever kindled his affections, and that no such 
affections had ever animated his actions ; and 
yet he was indubitably a good man, according 
to a generally approved standard, and could, 
in another style, be as eloquent for goodness 
as St. Paul himself. He would therefore have 
assured himself, either that it was not necessary 
to be a christian, or that this order of feelings 
was not necessary to that character. But if the 
apostle's sagacity had detected the cause of this 
reserve, and the nature of his associate's re- 
flections, he would most certainly have declared 
to him with emphasis that both these things 
were necessary — or that he had been deceived 
by inspiration ; and he would have parted from 
this self-complacent man with admonition and 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 393 

compassion. Would St. Paul have been wrong ? 
But if he would have been right, what becomes 
of those authors, whose works, whether from 
neglect or design, tend to satisfy their readers of 
the perfection of a form of character which he 
would have pronounced essentially unsound ? 

Again, moral writings are instructions on the 
subject of happiness. Now the doctrine of this 
subject is declared in the evangelical testimony : 
it had been strange indeed if it had not, when 
the happiness of man was expressly the object 
of the communication. And what, according to 
this communication, are the essential requisites 
to that condition of the mind without which no 
man ought to be called happy; without which 
ignorance or insensibility alone can be content, 
and folly alone can be cheerful ? A simple 
reader of the christian scriptures will reply that 
they are — a change of heart, called conversion, 
the assurance of the pardon of sin through Jesus 
Christ, a habit of devotion approaching so near 
to intercourse with the Supreme Object of de- 
votion that revelation has called it " communion 
with God," a process, named sanctification, of 
improvement in all internal and external virtue, 
a confidence in the divine Providence that all 
things shall work together for good, and a con- 
scious preparation for another life, including a 
firm hope of eternal felicity. And what else can 
he reply ? Did the lamp of heaven ever shine 
more clearly since omnipotence lighted it, than 



394 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

these ideas display themselves through the 
christian revelation ? Is this then absolutely 
and exclusively the true account of happi- 
ness ? It is not that which our accomplished 
writers in general have chosen to sanction. 
Your recollection will tell you that they 
have most certainly presumed to avow, or to 
insinuate, a doctrine of happiness which implies 
much of the christian doctrine to be a needless 
intruder on our speculations, or an imposition 
on our belief; and I wonder that this grave fact 
should so little have alarmed the christian stu- 
dents of elegant literature. The wide difference 
between the dictates of the two authorities is 
too evident to be overlooked; for the writers 
in question have very rarely, amidst an im- 
mense assemblage of sentiments concerning 
happiness, made any reference to what the 
inspired teachers so explicitly declare to be its 
constituent and vital principles. How many 
times you might read the sun or the moon to 
its repose, before you would find an assertion 
or a recognition, for instance, of a change of 
the mind being requisite to happiness, in any 
terms commensurate with the significance which 
this article seems to bear, in all the varied 
propositions and notices respecting it in the 
New Testament. Some of these writers appear 
hardly to have admitted or to have recollected 
even the maxim, that happiness must essen- 
tially consist in something so fixed in the mind 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 395 

itself, as to be substantially independent of 
worldly condition ; for their most animated 
representations of it are merely descriptions 
of fortunate combinations of external circum- 
stances, and of the feelings so immediately de- 
pending on them, that they will expire the 
moment that these combinations are broken up. 
The greater number, however, have fully ad- 
mitted so plain a truth, and have given their 
illustrations of the doctrine of happiness ac- 
cordingly. And what appears in these illustra- 
tions as the brightest image of happiness ? It 
is, probably, that of a man feeling an elevated 
complacency in his own excellence, a proud 
consciousness of rectitude ; privileged with free^ 
dom of thought, and extended views, cleared from 
the mists of prejudice and superstition ; display- 
ing the generosity of his nature in the exercise 
of beneficence, without feeling, however, any 
grateful incitement from remembrance of the 
transcendent generosity of the Son of Man ; 
maintaining, in respect to the events and bustle 
of the surrounding scene, a dignified indifference, 
which can let the world go its own way, undis- 
turbed by its disordered course ; temperately 
enjoying whatever good grows on his portion of 
the field of life, and living in a cool resignation 
to fate, without any strong expressions of a 
specific hope, or even solicitude, with regard to 
the termination of life and to all futurity. Now, 
notwithstanding a partial coincidence of this 



396 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

description with the christian theory of happi- 
ness,* it is evident that on the whole the two 
modes are so different that no man can realize 
them both. The consequence is clear ; the 
natural effect of incompetent and fallacious 
schemes, prepossessing the mind by every grace 
and force of genius, will be an aversion to the 
christian scheme ; which will be seen to place 
happiness in elements and relations much less 
flattering to what will be called a noble pride ; 
to make it consist in something of which it were 
a vain presumption for the man to fancy that 
himself can be the sovereign creator. 

It is, again, a prominent characteristic of the 
christian revelation, that having declared this 
life to be but the introduction to another, it 
systematically preserves the recollection of this 
great truth through every representation of 
every subject ; so that the reader is not allowed 
to contemplate any of the interests of life in 
a view which detaches them from the grand 
object and conditions of life itself. An apostle 
could not address his friends on the most com- 
mon concerns, for the length of a page, with- 
out the final references. He is like a person 

* No one can be so absurd as to represent the notions 
winch pervade the works of polite literature as totally, and 
at all points, opposite to the principles of Christianity ; what 
I am asserting is, that in some important points they are 
substantially and essentially different, and that in others they 
disown the christian modification. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 397 

whose eye, while he is conversing with you 
about an object, or a succession of objects, 
immediately near, should glance every moment 
toward some great spectacle appearing on the 
distant horizon. He seems to talk to his friends 
in somewhat of that manner of expression with 
which you can imagine that Elijah spoke, if he 
remarked to his companion any circumstance 
in the journey from Bethel to Jericho, and from 
Jericho to the Jordan ; a manner betraying the 
sublime anticipation which was pressing on his 
thoughts. The correct consequence of convers- 
ing with our Lord and his apostles would be, 
that the thought of immortality should become 
almost as habitually present and familiarized to 
the mind as the countenance of a domestic 
friend ; that it should be the grand test of the 
value of all pursuits, friendships, and specula- 
tions ; and that it should mingle a certain 
nobleness with every thing which it permitted 
to occupy our time. Now, how far will 
the discipline of modern polite literature co- 
incide ? 

I should be pleased to hear a student of that 
literature seriously profess that he is often and 
impressively reminded of futurity ; and to have 
it shown that ideas relating to this great sub- 
ject are presented in sufficient number, and in 
a proper manner, to produce an effect which 
should form a respectable proportion of the 
whole effect produced by these authors on 



398 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

susceptible minds. But there is no ground for 
expecting this satisfaction. 

It is true that the idea of immortality is so 
exceedingly grand, that many writers of genius 
who have felt but little genuine interest in reli- 
gion, have been led by their perception of what 
is sublime to introduce an allusion which is one 
of the most powerful means of elevating the 
imagination : and, in point of energy and splen- 
dour, their language has been worthy of the 
subject. In these instances, however, it is 
seldom found that the idea is presented in that 
light which, while displaying it prominent in its 
individual grandeur, shows also its extensive 
necessary connexion with other ideas: it ap- 
pears somewhat like a majestic tower, which a 
traveller in some countries may find standing 
in a solitary scene, no longer surrounded by 
the great assemblage of buildings, the ample 
city, of which it was raised to be the centre, 
the strength, and the ornament. Immortality 
has been had recourse to in one page of an 
ingenious work as a single topic of sublimity, 
in the same manner as a magnificent phe- 
nomenon, or a brilliant achievement, has been 
described in another. The author's object might 
rather seem to have been to supply an occa- 
sional gratification to taste, than to reduce the 
mind and all its feelings under the dominion of 
a grand practical principle. 

It is true also, that a graver class of fine 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 399 

writers, who have expressed considerable re- 
spect for religion and for Christianity, and who, 
though not writing systematically on morals, 
have inculcated high moral principles, have 
made references to a future state as the hope 
and sanction of virtue. But these references 
are made less frequently, and with less enforce- 
ment and emphasis, than the connexion between 
our present conduct and a future life must be 
acknowledged to claim. The manner in which 
they are made seems to betray either a defici- 
ency of interest in the great subject, or a pusil- 
lanimous anxiety not to offend those readers 
who would think it too directly religious. It is 
sometimes adverted to as if rather from a com- 
pelling sense, that if there is a future state, 
moral speculation must be defective, even to 
a degree of absurdity, without some allusions 
to it, than from feeling a profound delight in 
the contemplation. When the idea of another 
life is introduced to aggravate the force of moral 
principles, and the authority of conscience, it 
is done so as to appear like a somewhat 
reluctant acknowledgment of the deficiency of 
inferior sanctions. The consideration comes and 
vanishes in a transient light, after the writer 
has eloquently expatiated on every circumstance 
by which the present life can supply motives 
to goodness. In some instances, a watchful 
reader will also perceive what appears too much 
like care to divest the idea, when it must be 



400 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

introduced, of all direct references to that sacred 
Person who first completely opened the pro- 
spect of immortality, or to some of those other 
doctrines which he taught in immediate con- 
nexion with this great truth. There seems 
reason to suspect the writer of being pleased 
that, though it is indeed to the gospel alone 
that we owe the positive assurance of immor- 
tality, yet it was a subject so much in the 
conjectures and speculation of the heathen 
sages, that he may mention it without therefore 
so expressly recognizing the gospel, as he must 
in the case of introducing some truth of which 
not only the evidence, but even the first explicit 
conception, was communicated by that dispen- 
sation. 

Taking this defective kind of acknowledg- 
ment of a future state, together with that 
entire oblivion of the subject which prevails 
through an ample portion of elegant literature, 
I think there is no hazard in saying, that a 
reader who is satisfied without any other in- 
structions, will learn almost every lesson sooner 
than the necessity of habitually living for eter- 
nity. Many of these writers seem to take as 
much care to guard against the inroad of ideas 
from that solemn quarter, as the inhabitants of 
Holland do against the irruption of the sea ; 
and their writings do really form a kind of 
moral dyke against the invasion from the other 
world. They do not instruct a man to act, to 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 401 

enjoy, and to suffer, as a being that may by to- 
morrow have finally abandoned this orb : every 
thing is done to beguile the feeling of his 
being a " stranger and a pilgrim on the earth." 
The relation which our nature bears to the cir- 
cumstances of the present state, and which 
individuals bear to one another, is mainly the 
ground on which their considerations of duty 
proceed and conclude. And their schemes of 
happiness, though formed for beings at once 
immortal and departing, include little which 
avowedly relates to that world to which they 
are removing, nor reach beyond the period at 
which they will properly but begin to live. 
They endeavour to raise the groves of an 
earthly paradise, to shade from sight that vista 
which opens to the distance of eternity. 

Another article in which the anti-christian 
tendency of a great part of our productions of 
taste and genius is apparent, is, the kind of 
consolation administered to distress, old age, 
and death. Things of a mournful kind make 
so large a portion of the lot of humanity, that 
it is impossible for writers who take human 
life and feelings for their subject to avoid, (nor 
indeed have they endeavoured to avoid,) con- 
templating man in those conditions in which 
he needs every benignant aid to save him from 
despair. And here, if any where, we may 
justly require an absolute coincidence of all 
moral instructions with the religion of Christ : 

D D 



402 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

since consolation is eminently its distinction 
and its design ; since a being in distress has 
peculiarly a right not to be trifled with by the 
application of unadapted expedients ; and since 
insufficient consolations are but to mock it, 
and deceptive ones are to betray. It should 
then be clearly ascertained by the moralist, 
and never forgotten, what are the consolations 
provided by this religion, and under what con- 
dition they are offered. 

Christianity offers even to the irreligious, 
who relent amidst their sufferings, the allevia- 
tion springing from inestimable promises made 
to penitence : any other system, which should 
attempt to console them, simply as suffering, 
and without any reference to the moral and 
religious state of their minds, would be mis- 
chievous, if it were not inefficacious. What 
are the principal sources of consolation to the 
pious, is immediately apparent. The subjects of 
adversity and sorrow are assured that God 
exercises his paternal wisdom and kindness in 
afflicting his children : that this necessary disci- 
pline is to refine and exalt them by making them 
"< partakers of his holiness ;" that he mercifully 
regards their weakness and pains, and will not 
let them suffer beyond what they shall be able 
to bear; that their great Leader has suffered 
for them more than they can suffer, and com- 
passionately sympathizes with them still ; that 
this short life was far less designed to confer 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 403 

a present happiness, than to mature them to a 
fitness for being happy for ever"; and that pa- 
tient constancy shall receive a resplendent 
crown. An aged christian is soothed by the 
assurance that his Almighty Friend will not 
despise the enfeebled exertions, nor desert the 
oppressed and fainting weakness, of the last 
stage of his servant's life. When advancing 
into the shade of death itself, he is animated by 
the faith that the great sacrifice has taken the 
malignity of death away; and that the divine 
presence will attend the dark steps of this last 
and lonely enterprise, and shew the dying tra- 
veller and combatant that even this melancholy 
gloom is to him the utmost limit of the domi- 
nion of evil, the very confine of paradise, the 
immediate access to the region of eternal life. 

Now, in the greater number of the works 
under review, what are the modes of conso- 
lation which sensibility, reason, and eloquence, 
have most generally exerted themselves to apply 
to the mournful circumstances of life, and to 
its close ? You will readily recollect such as 
these : a man is suffering — well, it is the com- 
mon destiny, every one suffers sometimes, and 
some much more than he ; it is well it is no 
worse. If he is unhappy now, he has been 
happy, and he could not expect to be so inva- 
riably. It were folly to complain that his na- 
ture was constituted capable of suffering, or 
placed in a world where it is exposed to the 
dd 2 



404 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

infliction. If it were not capable of pain, it 
would not of pleasure. Would he be willing 
to lose his being, to escape these ills ? Or 
would he consent, if such a thing were possible, 
to be any person else? — The sympathy of each 
kind relation and friend will not be wanting. 
His condition may probably change for the 
better ; there is hope in every situation ; and 
meanwhile, it is an opportunity for displaying 
manly fortitude. A strong mind can proudly 
triumph over the oppression of pain, the vex- 
ations of disappointment, and the tyrranny of 
fortune. If the cause of distress is some irrepa- 
rable deprivation, it will be softened by the 
lenient hand of time.* 

The lingering months of an aged man are 
soothed almost, it is pretended, into cheerfulness, 
by the respectful attention of his neighbours; 
by the worldly prosperity and dutiful regard of 
the family he has brought up ; by the innocent 
gaiety and amusing activity of their children ; 
and by the consideration of his fair character 

* Can it be necessary to notice here again, that every 
system of moral sentiments must inevitably contain some 
principles not disclaimed by Christianity ; with whose dic- 
tates various particulars in this assemblage of consolations 
are not inconsistent if held in a subordinate rank ? But the 
enumeration taken altogether, and exclusively of the grand 
christian principles, fonns a scheme of consolation essentially 
different from that so beneficently displayed in the religion of 
Christ. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 405 

in society. If he is a man of thought, he 
has the added advantage of some philosophical 
considerations ; the cares and passions of his 
former life are calmed into a wise tranquillity ; 
he thinks he has had a competent share of life ; 
it is as proper and necessary for mankind to 
have their " exits/' as their " entrances ; " and 
his business will now be to make a " well- 
graced" retreat from the stage, like a man that 
has properly acted his part, and may retire with 
applause. 

As to the means of sustaining the spirit in 
death, the general voice of these authors asserts 
the chief and only all-sufficient one to be the 
recollection of a well-spent life. Some minor 
repellents of fear are added ; as for instance, 
that death is in fact a far less tremendous thing 
than that dire form of it by which imagination 
and superstition are haunted ; that the suffer- 
ings in death are less than men often endure in 
the course of life ; that it is only like one of 
those transformations with which the world of 
nature abounds ; and that it is easy to conceive, 
and reasonable to expect, a more commodious 
vehicle and habitation. It would seem almost 
unavoidable to glance a thought toward what 
revelation has signified to us of " the house not 
made with hands," of the " better country, that 
is, the heavenly." But the greater number of 
the writers of taste advert to the scene beyond 
this world with apparent reluctance, unless it 



406 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

can be done, on the one hand, in the manner 
of pure philosophical conjecture, or on the 
other, under the form of images, bearing some 
analogy to the visions of classical poetry.* 

The arguments for resignation to death are 
not so much drawn from future scenes, as from 
a consideration of the evils of the present life ; 
the necessity of yielding to a general and irre- 
versible law; the dignity of submitting with 
that calmness which conscious virtue is entitled 
to feel ; and the improbability (as these writers 
sometimes intimate) that any formidable evils 
are to be apprehended after death, except by 
a few of the very worst of the human race. 
Those arguments are in general rather aimed 
to quiet fear than to animate hope. The plead- 
ers of them seem more concerned to convey the 
dying man in peace and silence out of the world, 
than to conduct him to the celestial felicity. 
Let us but see him embarked on his unknown 
voyage in fair weather, and we are not account- 

* I am very far from disliking philosophical speculation, 
or daring nights of fancy, on this high subject. On the 
contrary, it appears to me strange that any one firmly 
holding the belief of a life to come, should not have both 
the intellectual faculty and the imagination excited to the 
utmost effort in the trial, however unavailing, to give some 
outlines of definite form to the unseen realities. What I 
mean to censure in the mode of referring to another life, is, 
the care to avoid any direct resemblance or recognition of 
the ideas which the New Testament has given to guide, in 
some small, very small degree, our conjectures. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 407 

able for what he may meet, or whither he may 
be carried, when he is gone out of sight. They 
seldom present a lively view of the distant hap- 
piness, especially in any of those images in 
which the christian revelation has intimated its 
nature. In which of these books, and by which 
of the real or fictitious characters whose last 
hours and thoughts they sometimes display, will 
you find, in terms or in spirit, the apostolic 
sentiments adopted, " To depart and be with 
Christ is far better ;" " Willing rather to be 
absent from the body, and present with the 
Lord?" The very existence of that sacred 
testimony which has given the only genuine 
consolations in death, and the only just con- 
ceptions of what is beyond it, seems to be 
scarcely recollected ; while the ingenious mo- 
ralists are searching the exhausted common- 
places of the stoic philosophy, or citing the 
treacherous maxims of a religion perverted to 
accordance with the corrupt wishes of mankind, 
or even recollecting the lively sayings of the few 
whose wit has expired only in the same moment 
with life, to fortify the pensive spirit for its last 
removal. " Is it not because there is not a God 
in Israel, that ye have sent to inquire of Baal- 
zebub the God of Ekron ?" 

Another order of sentiments concerning death, 
of a character too bold to be called consolations, 
has been represented as animating one class of 



408 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

human beings. In remarking on Lucan, I no- 
ticed that desire of death which has appeared in 
the expressions of great minds, sometimes while 
merely indulging solemn reflections when no 
danger or calamity immediately threatened, but 
often in the conscious approach towards a fatal 
catastrophe. Many writers of later times have 
exerted their whole strength, and have even ex- 
celled themselves, in representing the high sen- 
timents in which this desire has displayed itself; 
genius has found its very gold mine in this field. 
If this grandeur of sentiment had been of the 
genuine spirit to animate piety while it exalts 
the passions, some of the poets would have 
ranked among our greatest benefactors. Power- 
ful genius, aiding to inspire a christian triumph 
in the prospect of death, might be revered as a 
prophet, might be almost loved as a benignant 
angel. Few men's emotions can have approach- 
ed nearer to enthusiasm than mine, in reading 
the sentiments made to be uttered by sages and 
reflective heroes in this prospect. I have felt 
these passages as the last and mightiest of the 
enchantments of poetry, of power to inspire for 
a little while a contempt of all ordinary interests, 
of the world which we inhabit, and of life itself. 
While the enthusiast is elated with such an 
emotion, nothing may appear so captivating as 
some noble occasion of dying ; such an occasion 
as that when Socrates died for virtue ; or that 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 409 

when Brutus at Philippi fell with falling liberty.* 
Poetry has delighted to display personages of 
this high order, in the same fatal predicament ; 
and the situation of such men has appeared 
inexpressibly enviable, by means of those sub- 
lime sentiments by which they illuminated the 
gloom of death. The reader has loved to sur- 
round himself in imagination with that gloom, 
for the sake of irradiating it with that sublimity. 
All other greatness has been for a while eclipsed 
by the greatness of thought displayed by these 
contemplative and magnanimous spirits, though 
untaught by religion, when advancing to meet 
their fate. 

But the christian faith recalls the mind from 
this enchantment, to recollect that the christian 
spirit in dying can be the only right and noble 
one, and to consider whether these examples 
be not exceedingly different. Have not the 
most enlightened and devout christians, whether 
they have languished in their chambers, or passed 
through the fire of martyrdom, manifested their 

* Poetry will not easily exceed many of the expressions 
which mere history has recorded. I should little admire the 
capability of feeling, or greatly admire the christian temper, 
of the man who could without emotion read, for instance, 
the short observations of Brutus to his friend, (in contem- 
plation even of a self-inflicted death,) on the eve of the battle 
which extinguished all hope of freedom; "We shall either 
be victorious, or pass away beyond the power of those that 
are so. "We shall deliver our country by victory, or ourselves 
by death." 



410 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

elevation of mind in another strain of elo- 
quence ? The examples of greatness in death, 
which poetry has exhibited, generally want 
all those sentiments respecting the pardon 
of sin, and a Mediator who has accomplished 
and confers the deliverance, and often the ex- 
plicit idea of meeting the Judge, with which a 
christian contemplates his approaching end. 
Their expressions of intrepidity and exultation 
have no analogy with the language of an in- 
comparable saint and hero, " O death, where 
is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ? 
Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ." The kind of 
self-authorized confidence of taking possession 
of some other state of being, as monarchs would 
talk of a distant part of their empire which they 
were going to enter ; the proud apostrophes to 
the immortals, to prepare for the great and rival 
spirit that is coming ; their manner of consign- 
ing to its fate a good but falling cause, which 
will sink when they are gone, there not being 
virtue enough on earth to support, or in heaven 
to vindicate it ; their welcoming the approach of 
death in an exultation of lofty and bitter scorn 
of a hated world and a despicable race — are not 
the humility, nor the benevolence, nor the re- 
verential submission to the Supreme Governor, 
with which it is in the proper character of a 
christian to die. If a christian will partly unite 
with these high spirits in being weary of a world 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 411 

of dust and trifles, in defying the pains of death, 
in panting for an unbounded liberty, it will be 
at the same time with a most solemn commit- 
ment of himself to the divine mercy, which they 
forget, or were never instructed, to implore. 
And as to the vision of the other world, you 
will observe a great difference between the lan- 
guage of sublime poetry and that of revelation, 
in respect to the nature of the sentiments and 
triumphs of that world, and still more perhaps 
in respect to the associates with whom the 
departing spirit expects soon to mingle. The 
dying magnanimity of poetry anticipates high 
converse with the souls of heroes, and patriots, 
and perhaps philosophers ; a christian feels him- 
self going, (I may accommodate the passage,) 
to " an innumerable company of angels, to the 
general assembly and church of the first-born, 
to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just 
men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of 
the new covenant." 

In defence of those who have thus given at- 
tractions to the image of death by means foreign 
and opposite to the evangelical principles, it 
may be said, that many of the personages whom 
their scenes exhibit in the contemplation of 
death, or in the approach to it, were necessarily, 
from the age or country in which they lived or 
are feigned to have lived, unacquainted with 
Christianity ; and that therefore it would have 
been absurd to represent them as animated by 



412 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

christian sentiments. Certainly. But then I 
ask, on what ground men of genius will justify 
themselves for choosing, with a view to the im- 
provement of the heart, as they will profess, 
examples, of which they cannot preserve the 
consistency, without making them pernicious? 
Where is the conscience of that man, who is 
anxiously careful that every sentiment expressed 
by the historical or fictitious personage, in the 
fatal season, should be harmonious with every 
principle of the character, — but feels not the 
smallest concern about the consistency of se- 
lecting or creating the character itself, with his 
conviction of the absolute authority of the reli- 
gion of Christ ? In glancing forward, he knows 
that his favourite is to die, and that he cannot 
die as a christian ; yet he is to depart in a 
splendour of moral dignity. Would it not 
therefore be a dictate of conscience to warn his 
readers, that he expects to display the exit with 
a commanding sublimity, of which the natural 
effect is to be, a complacency, or an elation, in 
the idea of such a death as a christian cannot 
die ? But how would he feel while giving such 
a warning ? Might it not be said to him, And 
are you then willing to die otherwise than as a 
christian ? If you are, you virtually pronounce 
Christianity an imposture, and, to be consistent, 
should avow the rejection. If you are not, 
how can you endeavour to seduce your readers 
into an enthusiastic admiration of such a death 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 413 

as you wish may not be yours ? How can you 
endeavour to infect your reader with senti- 
ments which you could not hear him utter in 
his last hours without alarm for the state of 
his mind ? Is it necessary to the pathos and 
sublimity of poetry, to introduce characters 
which cannot be justly represented without 
falsifying our view of the most serious of all 
subjects ? If this be necessary, it would be 
better that poetry with all its charms were ex- 
ploded, than that the revelation of God should 
be frustrated in the great object and demand of 
fixing its own ideas of death, clearly and alone, 
in the minds of beings whose manner of pre- 
paring for it is of infinite consequence. But 
there is no such dilemma ; since many examples 
could be found, and an unlimited number may 
with rational probability be imagined, of chris- 
tian greatness in death. Are not then the pre- 
ference of examples adverse to Christianity, and 
that temper of the poet's mind which is in such 
full sympathy with them, empowering him to 
personate them with such entireness and anima- 
tion, and to express for them all the appropriate 
feelings, a worse kind of infidelity, as it is far 
more injurious, than that of the cold dealer in 
cavils and quibbles against the gospel? What 
is the christian belief of that poet worth, who 
would not on reflection feel self-reproach for 
the affecting scene, which may for a while have 
betrayed some of his readers to regard it as 



414 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

a more dignified thing to depart in the charac- 
ter of Socrates or Cato, than of St. John or 
a christian martyr? What would have been 
thought of the pupil of an apostle, who, after 
hearing his master describe the spirit of a 
christian's departure from the world, in lan- 
guage which he believed to be of conclusive 
authority, and which asserted or clearly implied 
that this alone was greatness in death, should 
have taken the first occasion to expatiate with 
enthusiasm on the closing scene of a philo- 
sopher, or on the exit of a stern hero, that, 
acknowledging within the visible creation no 
object for either confidence or fear, departed 
with the aspect of a being who should be going 
to summon his gods to judgment for the mis- 
fortunes of his life ? And how will these care- 
less men of genius give their account to the 
Judge of the world, for having virtually taught 
many aspiring minds that, notwithstanding his 
first coming was to conquer for man the king of 
terrors, there needs no recollection of him, in 
order to look toward death with noble defiance 
or sublime desire ? 

Some of their dying personages are so con- 
sciously uninformed of the realities of the invi- 
sible state, that the majestic sentiments which 
they disclose on the verge of life, can only 
throw a faint glimmering on unfathomable dark- 
ness ; but some anticipate the other world, as I 
have already observed, in very defined images. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 415 

I recollect one of them, after some just reflec- 
tions on the vanity and wretchedness of life, 
thus expressing his complacency in view of the 
great deliverer : 

" Death joins us to the great majority ; 
'Tis to be born to Platos and to Cassars ; 
'Tis to be great for ever. 
'Tis pleasure, 'tis ambition then, to die." 

Another, an illustrious female, in a tragedy 
which I lately read, welcomes death with the 
following sentiments : 

" Oh 'tis wondrous well ! 



Ye gods of death, that rule the Stygian gloom ! 
Ye who have greatly died, I come ! I come ! 
The hand of Rome can never touch me more ; 
Hail ! perfect freedom, hail !" 

" My free spirit should ere now have join'd 
That great assembly, those devoted shades, 
Who scorn'd to live till liberty was lost ; 
But, ere their country fell, abhorr'd the light," 

" Shift not thy colour at the sound of death ; 
It is to me perfection, glory, triumph. 
Nay, fondly would I choose it, though persuaded 
It were a long dark night without a morning ; 
To bondage far prefer it, since it is 
Deliverance from a world where Romans rule." 

" Then let us spread 



A bold exalted wing, and the last voice we hear, 
Be that of wonder and applause." 



416 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

" And is the sacred moment then so near ? 
The moment when yon sun, those heavens, this earth, 
Hateful to me, polluted by the Romans, 
And all the busy slavish race of men, 
Shall sink at once, and straight another state 
Rise on a sudden round ? 
Oh to be there!"* 

You will recollect to have read many equally 
improper to engage a christian's full sympathy, 
and therefore, convicting the poetic genius 
which produced them of treachery to the true 
faith, in such efforts to seduce our feelings. It 
is a pernicious circumstance in passages of this 
strain, that the special thoughts and images 
which are alien from the spirit of Christianity, 
are implicated with those general sentiments of 
anticipation, those emotions aspiring to great- 
ness and felicity in indefinite terms, which a 
dying christian may energetically express ; so 
that through the animated sympathy with the 
general, and as it were elementary sentiments, 
the reader's mind is beguiled into complacency 
in the more special ones of an antichristian 
spirit. 

Sometimes even very bad men are made to 
display such dignity in death, as at once to 
impart an attraction to their false sentiments, 

* This is not perhaps one of the best specimens : it is the 
last that has come under my notice. I am certain of having 
read many, but have not recollection enough to know where 
to find them. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 417 

and to mitigate the horror of their crimes. I 
recollect the interest with which I read, many 
years since, in Dr. Young's Busiris, the proud 
magnanimous speech at the end of which the 
tyrant dies : these are some of the lines : 

" I thank these wounds, these raging pains, which promise 
An interview with equals soon elsewhere. 
Great Jove, I come !" 

Even the detestable Zanga, in the prospect of 
death, while assured by his conscience that "to 
receive him hell blows all her fires," rises to a 
certain imposing greatness, by heroic courage 
tempered to a kind of moral dignity, through the 
relenting of revenge and the ingenuous mani- 
festation of sentiments of justice. To create an 
occasion of thus compelling us to do homage to 
the dying magnanimity of wicked men, is unfaith- 
fulness to the religion which condemns such 
magnanimity as madness. It is no justification 
to say, that such instances have been known, 
and therefore such representations are only 
vividly reflected images of reality ; for if the laws 
of criticism do not enjoin, in works of genius, 
a careful adaptation of all examples and sen- 
timents to the purest moral purpose, as a far 
higher duty than the study of resemblance to 
the actual world, the laws of piety most certainly 
do. Let the men who have so much literary 
conscience about this verisimilitude, content 
themselves with the office of mere historians, 

E E 



41$ ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

and then they may relate without guilt, pro- 
vided the relation be simple and unvarnished, 
all the facts, and speeches of depraved greatness 
within the memory of the world. But when 
they choose the higher office of inventing and 
combining, they are accountable for the con- 
sequences. They create a new person, and, 
in sending him into society, they can choose 
whether his example shall tend to improve or 
to pervert the minds that will be compelled to 
admire him. 

It is an immense transition from such instances 
as those I have been remarking on, to Rousseau's 
celebrated description of the death of his Eloisa, 
which would have been much more properly 
noticed in an earlier page. It is long since I read 
that scene, one of the most striking specimens 
probably of original conception and interesting 
sentiment that ever appeared ; but though the 
representation is so extended as to include every 
thing which the author thought needful to make 
it perfect, there is no explicit reference to the 
peculiarly evangelical causes of complacency in 
death. Yet the representation is so admirable, 
that the serious reader is tempted to suspect 
even his own mind of fanaticism, while he is 
expressing to his friends the wish that they, and 
that himself, may be animated, in the last day of 
life, by a class of ideas which that eloquent 
writer would have been ashamed to introduce. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 419 



LETTER IX. 

Does it not appear to you, my dear friend, 
that an approving reader of the generality of 
our ingenious authors will acquire an opinion 
of the moral condition of our species very differ- 
ent from that which is dictated by the divine 
declarations ? The Governor of all intelligent 
creatures has spoken of this nation or family 
of them, as exceedingly remote from conformity 
to that standard of perfection which alone can 
ever be his rule of judgment. And this is pro- 
nounced not only of vicious individuals, who 
are readily given up to condemnation by those 
who entertain the most partial or the proudest 
estimate of human nature, but of the constitu- 
tional quality of that nature itself. The moral 
part of the constitution of man is represented as 
placing him immensely below that rank of dig- 
nity and happiness to which, by his intellectual 
powers, and his privilege of being immortal, he 
would otherwise have seemed adapted to belong. 
The descriptions of the human condition are 
such as if the nature had, by a dreadful convul- 
sion, been separated off at each side from a pure 
and happy system of the creation, and had fallen 
down an immeasurable depth, into depravation 
and misery. In this state man is represented as 

e e 2 



420 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

loving, and therefore practically choosing, the 
evils which subject him to the condemnation of 
God ; and it is affirmed that no expedient, but 
that very extraordinary one which Christianity 
has revealed, can change this condition, and 
avert this condemnation with its formidable 
consequences. 

Every attempt to explain the wisdom and the 
exact ultimate intention of the Supreme Being, 
in constituting a nature subject in so fatal a 
degree to moral evil, will fail. But even if 
a new revelation were given to turn this dark 
inquiry into noonday, it would make no diffe- 
rence in the actual state of things. An exten- 
sion of knowledge could not reverse the fact, 
that the human nature has displayed, through 
every age, the most aggravated proofs of being 
in a deplorable and hateful condition, whatever 
were the reasons for giving a moral agent a con- 
stitution which it was foreseen would soon be 
found in this condition. Perhaps, if there were 
a mind expanded to a comprehension so far 
beyond all other created intelligences, that it 
could survey the general order of a great por- 
tion of the universe, and look into distant ages, 
it might understand in what manner the melan- 
choly fact could operate to the perfection of the 
vast system ; and according to what principles, 
and in reference to what ends, all that has taken 
place within the empire of the Eternal Monarch 
is right. But in this contemplation of the whole, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 421 

it would also take account of the separate con- 
dition of each part ; it would perceive that this 
human world, whatever are its relations to the 
universe, has its own distinct economy of in- 
terests, and stands in its own relation and 
accountableness to the righteous Governor ; 
and that, regarded in this exclusive view, it is 
an awful spectacle. Now, to this exclusive 
sphere of our own condition and interests reve- 
lation confines our attention ; and pours con- 
tempt, though not more than experience pours, 
on all presumption to reason on those grand 
unknown principles according to which the 
Almighty disposes the universe ; all our esti- 
mates therefore of the state and relations of 
man must take the subject on this insulated 
ground. Considering man in this view, the 
sacred oracles have represented him as a more 
melancholy object than Nineveh or Babylon in 
ruins ; and an infinite aggregate of obvious facts 
confirms the doctrine. This doctrine then is 
absolute authority in our speculations on human 
nature. But to this authority the writers in 
question seem to pay, and to teach their readers 
to pay, but little respect. And unless those 
readers are pre-occupied by the grave convic- 
tions^ of religious truth, rendered still more 
grave by painful reflection on themselves, and 
by observation on mankind; or unless they 
are capable of enjoying a malicious or misan- 
thropic pleasure, like Mandeville and Swift, 



422 



ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 



in detecting and exposing the degradation of 
our nature, it is not wonderful that they should 
be prompt to entertain the sentiments which 
insinuate a much more flattering estimate. Our 
elegant and amusing moralists no doubt copi- 
ously describe and censure the follies and vices 
of mankind ; but many of these, they maintain, 
are accidental to the human character, rather 
than a disclosure of intrinsic qualities. Others 
do indeed spring radically from the nature ; but 
they are only the wild weeds of a virtuous soil. 
Man is still a very dignified and noble being, 
with strong dispositions to all excellence, hold- 
ing a proud eminence in the ranks of existence, 
and (if such a Being is adverted to) high in the 
favour of his Creator. The measure of virtue in 
the world vastly exceeds that of depravity ; we 
should not indulge a fanatical rigour in our 
judgments of mankind ; nor be always reverting 
to an ideal perfection ; nor accustom ourselves 
to contemplate the Almighty always in the dark 
majesty of justice. — None of their speculations 
seem to acknowledge the gloomy fact which the 
New Testament so often asserts or implies, that 
all men are " by nature children of wrath." 

It is quite of course that among sentiments of 
this order, the idea of the redemption by Jesus 
Christ (if any allusion to it should occur,) 
can but appear with an equivocal import, and 
" shorn of the beams" which constitute the 
peculiar light of his own revelation. While man 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 423 

is not considered as lost, the mind cannot do 
justice to the expedient, or to " the only name 
under heaven/' by which he can be redeemed. 
Accordingly, the gift of Jesus Christ does not 
appear to be habitually recollected as the most 
illustrious instance of the beneficence of God 
that has come within human knowledge, and 
as the fact which has contributed more than all 
others to relieve the oppressive awfulness of the 
mystery in which our world is enveloped. No 
thankful joy seems to awake at the thought of 
so mighty an interposition, and of him whose 
sublime appointment it was to undertake and 
accomplish it. When it is difficult to avoid 
making some allusion to him, he is acknow- 
ledged rather in any of his subordinate charac- 
ters, than as absolutely a Redeemer ; or if the 
term Redeemer, or, our Saviour, is introduced, 
it is done as with a certain inaptitude to pro- 
nounce a foreign appellative ; as with a some- 
what irksome feeling at falling in momentary 
contact with language so specifically of the 
christian school. And it is done in a manner 
which betrays, that the author does not mean 
all that he feels some dubious intimation that 
such a term should mean. Jesus Christ is 
regarded rather as having added to our moral 
advantages, than as having conferred that with- 
out which all the rest were in vain ; rather as 
having made the passage to a happy futurity 
somewhat more commodious, than as having 



424 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

formed the passage itself over what was else 
an impassable gulf. Thus that comprehensive 
sum of blessings, called in the New Testament 
Salvation, or Redemption, is shrunk into a com- 
paratively inconsiderable favour, which a less 
glorious messenger might have brought, which 
a less magnificent language than that dictated 
by inspiration might have described, and which 
a less costly sacrifice might have secured. 

It is consistent with this delusive idea of 
human nature, and these crude, and faint, and 
narrow conceptions of the christian economy, 
that these writers commonly represent felicity 
hereafter as the pure reward of merit. I believe 
you will find this, as far as any allusions are made 
to the subject, the prevailing opinion through 
the school of polite literature. You will perceive 
it to be the real opinion of many writers who 
do sometimes advert, in some phrase employed 
by way of respectful ceremony to our national 
creed, to the work or sacrifice of Christ. 

I might remark on the antichristian motives 
to action which are sanctioned and inspirited by 
many of these authors : I will only notice one, 
the love of glory ; that is, the desire of being 
distinguished, admired, and praised. 

No one will think of such a thing as bringing 
the christian laws in absolute prohibition of 
our desire to possess the favourable opinion of 
our fellow men. In the first place, a material 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 425 

portion of human happiness depends on the at- 
tachment of relations and friends, and it is right 
for a man to wish for the happiness resulting 
from such attachment. And since the degree in 
which he will obtain it, must depend very much 
on the higher or lower estimate which these 
persons entertain of his qualities and abilities, 
it is right for him to wish, while he endeavours 
to deserve, that their estimate may be high, in 
order that he may enjoy a large share of their 
affection. 

In the next place, it is too plain to be worth 
an observation, that if it were possible for a man 
to desire the respect and admiration of mankind 
purely as a mean of giving a greater efficacy to 
his efforts for their welfare, and for the promo- 
tion of the cause of heaven, while he would be 
equally gratified that any other man, in whose 
hands this mean would have exactly the same 
effect, should obtain the admiration instead of 
himself, this would be something eminently 
more than innocent ; it would be the apothe- 
osis of a passion which in its ordinary quality 
deserves no better denomination than vanity. 
But where is the example ? 

In the third place, as the Creator has included 
this desire in the essential constitution of our 
nature, he intended its gratification, in some 
limited degree, to be a direct and immediate 
cause of pleasure. The good opinion of man- 
kind, expressed in praise, or indicated by any 



426 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

other signs, pleases us by a law of the same 
order as that which constitutes mutual affection 
a pleasure, or that which is the cause that we 
are gratified by music, or the beauties and gales 
of spring. The indulgence of this desire is thus 
authorized, to a certain extent, by its appoint- 
ment to be a source of pleasure. 

But to what extent ? It is notorious that this 
desire has, if I may so express it, an immense 
voracity. It has within itself no natural prin- 
ciple of limitation, since it is incapable of being 
gratified to satiety. A whole continent applaud- 
ing or admiring has not satisfied some men's 
avarice of what they called glory. To what 
extent, I repeat, may the desire be indulged ? 
Evidently not beyond that point where it begins 
to introduce its evil accessories, envy, or unge- 
nerous competition, or resentful mortification, 
or disdainful comparison, or self-idolatry. But I 
appeal to each man who has deeply reflected on 
himself, or observed those around him, whether 
this desire under even a considerably limited 
degree of indulgence be not very apt to intro- 
duce some of these accessories ; and whether, in 
order to preclude them from his own mind, he 
have not at times felt it necessary to impose on 
this desire a restraint almost as unqualified as 
if he had been aiming to suppress it altogether. 
In wishing to prohibit an excess of its indulgence, 
he has perceived that even what had seemed to 
him a small degree has amounted, or powerfully 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 427 

tended, to that excess — except when the desire 
has been operating under the kindly and ap- 
proved modification, of seeking to engage the 
affection of relations or a few friends. The 
measure therefore of this passion, compatible 
with the best condition of the mind, will be 
found to be exceedingly limited. 

Again, the desire cannot be cherished with- 
out becoming a motive of action exactly in the 
degree in which it is cherished. Now if the 
most authoritative among a good man's motives 
of action must be the wish to please God, it is 
evident that the passion which supplies another 
motive, ought not to be allowed in a degree that 
will empower the motive thus put in force to 
contest, in the mind, the supremacy of the pious 
motive. But here, again, I appeal to the reflec- 
tive man of conscience, whether he have not 
found that the desire of human applause, in- 
dulged in only such a degree as he had not, for 
a while, suspected of being immoderate, may be 
a motive strong enough not only to maintain a 
rivalry with what should be the supreme motive, 
but absolutely to prevail over it. In each pur- 
suit or performance in which he has excelled, 
or endeavoured to excel, has he not sometimes 
been forced to observe, with indignant grief, that 
his thoughts much more promptly adverted to 
human praise, than to divine approbation? And 
when he has been able in some measure to re- 
press the passion, has he not found that a slight 



428 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

stimulus was competent to restore its impious 
ascendency ? — Now what is it that should follow 
from these observations ? What can it be, as a 
general inference, but plainly this, that though 
the desire of human applause, if it could be a 
calm, closely limited, and subordinate feeling, 
would be consistent with christian virtue ; yet, 
since it so mightily tends to an excess, destruc- 
tive of the very essence of that virtue, it ought, 
(excepting in the cases where human estimation 
is sought as a mean toward some valuable end,) 
to be opposed and repressed in a manner not 
much less general and unconditional than if it 
were purely evil ? The special inference, avail- 
able to the design of this essay, is, that so much 
of our literature as, on the contrary, tends to 
animate the passion with new force, is most 
pernicious. 

These assertions are certainly in the spirit 
of the New Testament, which, not exacting a 
total extinction of the love of human applause, 
yet alludes to most of its operations with cen- 
sure, exhibits, probably, no approved instance 
of its indulgence, and abounds with emphati- 
cally cogent representations, both of its per- 
nicious influence when it predominates, and of 
its powerful tendency to acquire the predomi- 
nance. The honest disciple of that divine 
school, being at the same time a self-observer, 
will be convinced that the degree beyond which 
the passion is not tolerated by the christian law, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 429 

is a degree which it will be sure to reach and to 
exceed in his mind in spite of the most systema- 
tical opposition. The most resolute and perse- 
vering repression will still leave so much of this 
passion as Christianity will pronounce a fault or 
a vice. He will be anxious to assemble, in aid 
of the repressive discipline, all the arguments of 
reason, all striking examples, and all the inter- 
dictions of the Bible. 

Now I think I cannot be mistaken in assert- 
ing, that a great majority of our fine writers 
have gone directly counter to any such doc- 
trine and discipline. No advocate will venture 
to deny, that they have commended and insti- 
gated the love of applause, of fame, of glory, 
or whatever it may be called, in a degree which, 
if the preceding representation be just, places 
them in pointed hostility to the christian reli- 
gion. Sometimes, indeed, when it was the pla- 
netary hour for high philosophy, or when they 
were in a splenetic mood, occasioned perhaps 
by some chagrin of disappointed vanity, they 
have acknowledged, and even very rhetorically 
exposed, the inanity of this same glory. Most 
of our ingenious authors have, in one place or 
another, been moral or satirical at the expense 
of what Pope so aptly denominates the " fool 
to fame." They perceived the truth, but as the 
truth did not make them free, they were willing 
after all to dignify a passion to which they felt 
themselves irretrievable slaves. And they have 



430 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

laboured to do it by celebrating, with every 
splendid epithet, the men who were impelled by 
this passion through the career in which they 
were the idols of servile mankind and their 
own ; by describing glory as the best incentive 
to noble actions, and their worthiest reward ; 
by placing the temple of Virtue (proud station 
of the goddess) in the situation to be a mere 
introduction to that of Fame; by lamenting that 
so few, and their unfortunate selves not of the 
number, can " climb the steep where that proud 
temple shines afar :" and by intimating a charge 
of meanness of spirit against those, who have 
no generous ardour to distinguish themselves 
from the crowd, by deeds calculated and de- 
signed to pitch them aloft in gazing admiration. 
If sometimes the ungracious recollection strikes 
them, and seems likely to strike their readers, 
that this admiration is provokingly capricious 
and perverse, since men have gained it without 
rightful claims, and lost it without demerit, and 
since all kinds of fools have offered the incense 
to all kinds of villains, they escape from the 
disgust and from the benefit of this recollection 
by saying, that it is honourable fame that noble 
spirits seek ; for they despise the ignorant mul- 
titude, and seek applause by none but worthy 
actions, and from none but worthy judges. Al- 
most every one of these writers will sometimes, 
perhaps, advert to the approbation of the Su- 
preme Being, as what wise and good men will 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 431 

value most ; but such an occasional acknow- 
ledgment feebly counteracts the effect of many 
glowing sentiments and descriptions of a con- 
trary tendency. — If this be a correct animadver- 
sion on our popular fine writers, there can be no 
question whether they be likely to animate their 
readers with christian motives of action. 

I will remark only on one particular more, 
namely, the culpable license, careless, if not 
sometimes malignant, taken by the lighter order 
of these writers, and by some even of the graver, 
in their manner of ridiculing the cant and extra- 
vagance by which hypocrisy, fanaticism, or the 
peculiarities of a sect or a period, may have dis- 
graced or falsified christian doctrines. Some- 
times, indeed, they have selected and burlesqued 
modes of expression which, were not cant, and 
which ignorance and impiety alone would have 
dared to ridicule. And often, in exposing to 
contempt the follies of notion or language or 
manners, by which a christian of good taste 
deplores that the profession of the gospel should 
ever have been deformed, they take not the 
smallest care to preserve a clear separation 
between what taste and sense have a right to 
explode, and what piety bids to reverence. By 
this criminal carelessness, (to give it no stronger 
denomination,) they have fixed repulsive and 
irreverent associations on the evangelical truth 
itself, for which many persons, when afterwards 



432 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

they have yielded their faith and affection to that 
truth, have had cause to wish that certain vo- 
lumes had gone into the fire, instead of coming 
into their hands. Many others, who have not thus 
become its converts, retain the bad impression 
unabated, and cherish the disgust. Gay writers 
ought to know that this is dangerous ground. 

I am sorry that this extended censure on 
works of genius and taste could not be prosecuted 
with a more marked application, and with more 
discriminative references than the continual re- 
petition of the expressions, " elegant literature," 
and " these writers." It might be a service of 
some value to the evangelical cause, if a work 
were written containing a faithful estimate, indi- 
vidually, of the most popular writers of the last 
century and a half, in respect to the important 
subject of these comments ; with formal citations 
from some of their works, and a candid statement 
of the general tendency of others. In an essay 
like this it is impossible to make an enumeration 
of names, or pass a judgment, except in a very 
cursory manner, on any particular author. Even 
the several classes of authors, which I mentioned 
some time back, as coming under the accusation, 
shall detain you but a short time. 

The Moral Philosophers for the most part 
seem anxious to avoid every thing that might 
render them liable to be mistaken for Christian 
Divines. They regard their department as a 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 433 

science complete in itself; and they investigate 
the foundation of morality, define its laws, and 
affix its sanctions, in a manner generally so much 
apart from Christianity, that the reader would 
almost conclude that religion to be another 
science complete in itself.* An entire separa- 
tion, it is true, cannot well be preserved ; since 
Christianity has decided some moral questions 
on which reason was dubious or silent ; and 
since that final retribution, which the New 
Testament has so luminously foreshown, brings 
evidently the greatest of sanctions. To make 
no reference in the course of inculcating moral 
principles, to a judgment to come, if there be 
an understood admission that it is actually re- 
vealed, would look like systematic irreligion. 
But still it is striking to observe how small a 
portion of the ideas, (relative to this and other 
points of the greatest moral interest,) which 
distinguish the New Testament from other 
books, many moral philosophers have thought 
indispensable to a theory in which they pro- 
fessed to include the sum of the duty and 

* When it happens sometimes, that a moral topic hardly 
can be disposed of without some recognition of its involving, 
or being intimately connected with, a theological doctrine, it 
is curious to notice, with what an air of indifference, some- 
what partaking of contempt, one of these writers will ob- 
serve, that that view of the matter is the business of the 
divines, with whose department he does not pretend to 
interfere. 

F F 



434 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

interests of man. A serious reader is con- 
strained to feel that either there is too much 
in that book, or too little in theirs. He will 
perceive that, in the inspired book, the moral 
principles are intimately interwoven with all 
those doctrines which could not have been 
known but through revelation. He will find 
also, in this superior book, a vast number of 
ideas avowedly designed to interest the affec- 
tions in favour of all moral principles and virtues. 
The "quickening spirit," thus breathed among 
what might else be dry and lifeless, is drawn 
from considerations of the divine mercy, the 
compassion of the Redeemer, the assurance of 
aid from heaven in the difficult strife to be what 
the best principles prescribe, the relationship 
subsisting between good men on earth and those 
who are departed ; and other kindred topics, 
quite out of the range to which the mere moral 
preceptors appear to hold themselves limited. 
The system of morals, as placed in the tem- 
perature of such considerations, has the cha- 
racter and effect of a different zone. Thus, 
while any given virtue, equally prescribed in the 
treatise of the moral philosopher and the chris- 
tian code, would in mere definition be the same 
in both, the manner in which it bears on the 
heart and conscience must be greatly different. 

It is another difference also, of momentous 
consequence, if it be found that the christian 
doctrine declares the virtues of a good man not 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 435 

to be the cause of his acceptance with God, 
and that the philosophic moralists disclaim any 
other. On the whole it must be concluded, 
that there cannot but be something very defec- 
tive in that theory of morality which makes 
so slight an acknowledgment of the religion 
of Christ, and takes so little of its peculiar 
character. The philosophers place the reli- 
gion in the relation of a diminutive satellite 
to the sphere of moral interests ; useful as 
throwing a few rays on that side of it on which 
the solar light of human wisdom could not 
directly shine ; but that it can impart a vital 
warmth, or claims to be acknowledged para- 
mount in dignity and influence, some of them 
seem not to have a suspicion. 

No doubt, innumerable reasonings and con- 
clusions may be advanced on moral subjects 
which shall be true on a foundation of their own, 
equally in the presence of the evangelical sys- 
tem and in its absence. Independently of that 
system, it were easy to illustrate the utility 
of virtue, the dignity which it confers on a 
rational being, its accordance to the " reason 
and fitness of things," its conformity and analogy 
to much of what may be discerned in the order 
of the universe. It would also have been easy 
to pass from virtue in the abstract, into an 
illustration and enforcement of the several 
distinct virtues, as arranged in a practical 
system. And if it should be asked, Why may 

f f 2 



436 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

not some writers employ their speculations 
on those parts and views of moral truth which 
are thus independent of the gospel, leaving 
it to other men to christianize the whole by 
the addition of the evangelical relations, motives, 
and conditions ? — I readily answer, that this may 
sometimes very properly be done. An author 
may render good service by demonstrating, 
for instance, the utility of virtue in general, or 
of any particular virtue, as shown in its effect 
on the prosperity of states, of smaller commu- 
nities, and of individuals ; in its conduciveness 
to health, mental tranquillity, social confidence, 
and the like. In doing this, he would expressly 
take a marked ground, and aim at a specific 
object. He would not (or should not) let it be 
imagined for a moment that such particular 
views embrace all that is of essential interest 
in the reasons and relations of moral recti- 
tude. It would be plainly understood that other 
considerations, of the highest importance, recog- 
nising, in all our obligations to virtue, our rela- 
tions with God, with a spiritual economy, with 
a future life, are indispensable to a complete 
moral theory. But the charge against the 
moral philosophers is meant to be applied to 
those who, not professing to have any such 
specific and limited scope, but assuming the 
office of moralist in its most comprehensive 
character, and making themselves responsible 
as teachers of virtue in its whole extent, have 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 437 

yet quite forgotten the vital implication of 
ethical with evangelical truth. 

When I mention our Historians, it will in- 
stantly occur to you, that the very foremost 
names in this department import every thing 
that is deadly to the christian religion itself, 
as a divine communication, and therefore lie 
under a condemnation of a different kind. 
But may not many others, who would have 
repelled the imputation of being enemies to 
the christian cause, be arraigned of having 
forgotten what was due from its friends ? The 
historian intends his work to have the effect 
of a series of moral estimates of the persons 
whose actions he records ; now, if he believes 
that a Judge of the world will come at length, 
and pronounce on the very characters that his 
work adjudges, it is one of the plainest dictates 
of good sense, that all the awards of the his- 
torian should be faithfully coincident with the 
judgments which may be expected ultimately 
from that supreme authority. Those distinctions 
of character which the historian applauds as 
virtues, or censures as vices, should be exactly 
the same qualities, which the language already 
heard from that Judge certifies us that he will 
approve or condemn. It is worse than foolish 
to erect a literary court of morals and human 
character, of which the maxims, the language, 
the decisions, and the judges, will be equally 



438 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

the objects of contempt before Him, whose in- 
telligence will instantly distinguish and place in 
light the right and the wrong of all time. What 
a wretched abasement will overwhelm on that 
day some of the pompous historians, who were 
called by others, and accounted by themselves, 
the high authoritative censors of an age, and 
whose verdict was to fix on each name pei'- 
petual honour or infamy, if they shall find 
many of the questions and the decisions of 
that tribunal proceed on principles which they 
would have been ashamed to apply, or never 
took the trouble to understand. How will 
they be confounded, if some of the men whom 
they had extolled, are consigned to ignominy, 
and some that they had despised, are applauded 
by the voice at which the world will tremble 
and be silent. But such a sad humiliation may, 
I think, be apprehended for many of the his- 
torians, by every serious christian reader who 
shall take the hint of this subject along with 
him through their works. He will not seldom 
feel that the writers seem uninformed, while 
they remark and decide on actions and cha- 
racters, that a final Lawgiver has come from 
heaven, or that he will come, or on what ac- 
count he will come, yet once more. Their very 
diction often abjures the plain christian deno- 
minations of good and evil ; nor do I need to 
recount the specious and fallacious terms which 
they have employed in their place. How then 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 439 

can a mind which learns to think in their 
manner, learn at the same time to think in his 
from whom it will, however, be found no light 
matter to have dissented, when his judgment 
shall be declared for the last time in this 
world ? 

The various interesting sets of short Essays, 
with the Spectator and Rambler at their head, 
must have had a very considerable influence, 
during a season at least, and not yet entirely 
extinct, on the moral taste of the public. 
Perhaps, however, it is too late in the day for 
any interest to be taken in religious animad- 
versions which might with propriety have been 
ventured upon the Spectator, when it was the 
general and familiar favourite with the reading 
portion of the community.* A work of such wide 

* Within the thirty or forty years antecedent to the date 
of the present edition, and even within the shorter interval 
since the slight remarks in the text were written, there has 
been a surprising change in the tone of our literature, and 
in the public taste which it both consults and forms. The 
smooth elegance, the gentle graces, the amusing, easy, and 
not deep current of sentiment, of which Addison is our finest 
example, have come to be regarded as languid, and almost 
insipid : and the passion is for force, energy, bold develope- 
ment of principles, and every kind of high stimulus. This 
has been the inevitable accompaniment of the prodigious 
commotion in the state of the world, the rousing of the 
general mind from its long lethargy, to an activity and an 
exertion of power which nothing can quell, which is destined 



440 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

compass, and avowedly assuming the office 
of guardian and teacher of all good principles, 
gave fair opportunities for a christian writer 
to introduce, excepting what is strictly termed 
science, a little of every subject affecting the 
condition and happiness of men. Why then 
was it fated that the stupendous circumstance 
of the redemption by the Messiah, of which the 
importance is commensurate with the whole 
interests of man, with the value of his immortal 
spirit, with the government of his Creator in 
this world, and with the happiness of eternity, 
should not a few times, in the long course and 
extensive moral jurisdiction of that work, be 



to a continually augmenting operation till the condition of 
the world be changed. This new spirit of our literature is a 
great advantage gained ; but gained at a grievous cost ; for 
we have in its train an immense quantity of affectation : all 
sorts and sizes of authors must be aiming at vigour, point, 
bold strokes, originality. The consequence is, an ample 
exhibition of contortion, tricks of surprise, paradox, head- 
long dash, factitious fulmination, and turgid inanity. In 
some of the grossest instances, this ape of mental force and 
freedom stares, and swaggers, and spouts a half-drunken 
rant. One wonders to see how much even some of the 
ablest among the writers of the present times have gone into 
the bad fashion, have discarded the masculine simplicity so 
graceful to intellectual power, and spoiled compositions 
admirable for vigorous thinking by a continual affectation, 
which carries them along in a dashing capering sort of style, 
as if determined that the " march of intellect " shall be a 
dance to a fiddle. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 441 

set forth in the most explicit, uncompromising, 
and solemn manner, in the full aspect and 
importance which it bears in the christian reve- 
lation, with the directness and emphasis of 
apostolic fidelity ? Why should not a few of 
the most peculiar of the doctrines, comprehended 
in the primary one of salvation by the Mediator, 
have been clothed with the fascinating elegance 
of Addison, from whose pen many persons 
would have received an occasional evangelical 
lesson with incomparably more candour than 
from any professed divine ? A pious and be- 
nevolent man, such as the avowed advocate 
of Christianity ought to be, should not have 
been contented that so many thousands of 
minds as his writings were adapted to instruct 
and to charm, should have been left, for any 
thing that he very unequivocally attempted to 
the contrary in his most popular works, to end 
a life which he had contributed to refine, ac- 
quainted but slightly with the grand security 
of happiness after death. Or if it could not be 
deemed his duty to introduce in a formal man- 
ner any of the most specifically evangelical 
subjects, it might at least have been expected, 
that some of the many serious essays scattered 
through the Spectator should have more of a 
christian strain, more recognition of the great 
oracle, in the speculations concerning the Deity, 
and the gravest moral subjects. There might, 
without hazard of symbolizing with the dreaded 



442 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

fanaticism of the preceding age, have been more 
assimilation of what may be called, as it now 
stands, a literary fashion of religion, to the 
spirit of the New Testament. From him also, 
as a kind of dictator among the elegant writers 
of the age, it might have been expected that he 
would set himself, with the same decision and 
virtuous indignation which he made his Cato 
display against the betrayers of Roman liberty 
and laws, to denounce that ridicule which has 
wounded religion by a careless or by a crafty 
manner of holding up its abuses to scorn : but 
of this impropriety (to use an accommodating 
term,) the Spectator itself is not free from 
examples. 

Addison wrote a book expressly in defence of 
the religion of Christ ; but to be the dignified 
advocate of a cause, and to be its humble dis- 
ciple, may be very different things. An advo- 
cate has a feeling of making himself important ; 
he seems to confer something on the cause ; 
but as a disciple, he must surrender to feel 
littleness, humility, and submission. Self-im- 
portance might find more to gratify it in be- 
coming the patron of a beggar, than the servant 
of a potentate. Addison was, moreover, very 
unfortunate, for any thing like justice to genuine 
Christianity, in the class of persons with whom 
he associated, and among whom he did not hold 
his pre-eminence by any such imperial tenure, 
as could make him careless of the policy of 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 443 

pleasing them by a general conformity of sen- 
timent. One can imagine with what a perfect 
storm of ridicule he would have been greeted, 
on entering one of his celebrated coffee-houses 
of wits, on the day after he should have pub- 
lished in the Spectator a paper, for instance, on 
the necessity of being devoted to the service of 
Jesus Christ. The friendship of the world ought 
to be a " pearl of great price," for its cost is 
very serious. 

The powerful and lofty spirit of Johnson was 
far more capable of scorning the ridicule, and 
defying the opposition, of wits and worldlings. 
And yet his social life must have been greatly 
unfavourable to a deep and simple consideration 
of christian truth, and the cultivation of christian 
sentiment. Might not even his imposing and 
unchallenged ascendency itself betray him to 
admit, insensibly, an injurious influence on his 
mind ? He associated with men of whom many 
were very learned, some extremely able, but 
comparatively few made any decided profession 
of piety; and perhaps a considerable number 
were such as would in other society have shown 
a strong propensity to irreligion. This however 
dared not to appear undisguisedly in Johnson's 
presence ; and it is impossible not to revere the 
strength and noble severity that made it so 
cautious. But this constrained abstinence from 
overt irreligion had the effect of preventing 
the repugnance of his judgment and religious 



444 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

feelings to the frequent society of men from 
whom he would have recoiled, if the real temper 
of their minds, in regard to the most important 
subjects, had been unreservedly forced on his 
view. Decorum toward religion being preserved, 
he would take no rigorously judicial account of 
the internal character of those, who brought so 
finely into play his mental powers and resources, 
in conversations on literature, moral philosophy, 
and general intelligence ; and who could enrich 
every matter of social argument by their learn- 
ing, their genius, or their knowledge of mankind. 
But if, while every thing unequivocally hostile to 
Christianity was kept silent in his company, there 
was nevertheless a latent impiety in possession 
of the heart, it would inevitably, however unob- 
viously, infuse something of its spirit into the 
communications of such men. And, through 
the complacency which he felt in the high 
intellectual intercourse, some infection of the 
noxious element would insinuate its way into 
his own ideas and feelings. For it is hardly pos- 
sible for the strongest and most vigilant mind, 
under the genial influence of eloquence, fancy, 
novelty, and bright intelligence, interchanged 
in amicable collision, to avoid admitting some 
effluvia (if I may so express it) breathing from 
the most interior quality of such associates, and 
tending to produce an insensible assimilation ; 
especially if there should happen to be, in ad- 
dition, a conciliating exterior of accomplishment, 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 445 

grace, and liberal manners. Thus the very pre- 
dominance by which Johnson could repress the 
direct irreligion of statesmen, scholars, wits, 
and accomplished men of the world, might, by 
retaining him their intimate or frequent asso- 
ciate, subject him to meet the influence of that 
irreligion acting in a manner too indirect and 
refined to excite either hostility or caution. 

But indeed if his caution was excited, there 
might still be a possibility of self-deception in 
the case. The great achievement and conscious 
merit of upholding, by his authority, a certain 
standard of good principles among such men, and 
compelling an acquiescence at least, wherever 
he was present, might tend to make himself feel 
satisfied with that order of sentiments, though 
materially lower than the standard which his 
conscientious judgment must have adopted, if he 
had formed it under the advantage of long and 
thoughtful retirement and exemption from the 
influence of such associates. It would be diffi- 
cult for him to confess to himself that what was 
high enough for a repressive domination over 
impiety, might yet be below the level of true 
Christianity. It is hard for a man to suspect 
himself deficient in that very thing in which he 
not only excels other men, but mends them. 
Nothing can well be more unfortunate for chris- 
tian attainments, even in point of right judg- 
ment, than to be habitually in society where a 
man will feel as if he held a saintly eminence of 



446 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

character in merely securing a decent neutrality, 
or a semblance of slight partial assent, in other 
words a forbearance of hostility, to that divine 
law of faith and morals, which is set up over 
that society and all mankind, as the grand dis- 
tinguisher between those who are in light and 
those who are in darkness, those who are ap- 
proved and those who are condemned; and 
which has been sent on earth with a demand, 
not of this worthless non- aggression, but of 
cordial entire addiction and devoted zeal. 

If there be any truth in the representations 
which make so large a part of this essay, John- 
son's continual immersion in what is denominated 
polite literature, must have subjected him to the 
utmost action and pervasion of an influence, of 
which the antichristian effect cannot be neutra- 
lized, without a more careful study than we 
have reason to believe he gave, or even had 
time to give, to the doctrine of religion as a 
distinct independent subject. 

It must however be admitted that this illus- 
trious author, who, though here mentioned only 
in the class of essayists, is to be ranked among 
the greatest moral philosophers, is less at vari- 
ance with the essentials of the christian economy, 
than the very great majority of either of these 
classes of authors. His speculations tend in a 
far less degree to beguile the approving and 
admiring reader into a spirit, which feels repelled 
in estrangement and disgust on turning to the 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 447 

instructions of Christ and his apostles ; and he 
has more explicit and solemn references to the 
grand purpose of human life, to a future judg- 
ment, and to eternity, than almost any other of 
our elegant moralists has had the piety or the 
courage to make. There is so much that most 
powerfully coincides and cooperates with chris- 
tian truth, that the disciple of Christianity the 
more regrets to meet occasionally a sentiment, 
respecting, perhaps, the rule to judge by in the 
review of life, the consolations in death, the 
effect of repentance, or the terms of acceptance 
with God, which he cannot reconcile with the 
evangelical theory, nor with those principles of 
christian faith in which Johnson avowed his 
belief. In such a writer he cannot but deem 
such deviations a matter of grave culpability. 

Omission is his other fault. Though he did 
introduce in his serious speculations more dis- 
tinct allusions to religious ideas than most other 
moralists, yet he did not introduce them so 
often as may be claimed from a writer who 
frequently carries seriousness to the utmost 
pitch of solemnity. There scarcely ever was 
an author, not formally theological, in whose 
works a large proportion of explicit christian 
sentiment was more requisite for a consistent en- 
tireness of character, than in the moral writings 
of Johnson. No writer ever more completely 
exposed and blasted the folly and vanity of the 
greatest number of human pursuits. The visage 



448 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

of Medusa could not have darted a more fatal 
glance against the tribe of gay triflers, the com- 
petitors of ambition, the proud exhibiters in 
the parade of wealth, the rhapsodists on the 
sufficiency of what they call philosophy for hap- 
piness, the grave consumers of life in useless spe- 
culations, and every other order of " walkers in 
a vain show." His judicial sentence is directed, 
as with a keen and mephitic blast, on almost all 
the most favourite pursuits of mankind. But 
it was so much the more peculiarly his duty to 
insist, with fulness and emphasis, on that one 
model of character, that one grand employment 
of life, which is enjoined by heaven, and will 
stand the test of that unshrinking severity of 
judgment, which should be exercised by every 
one who looks forward to the test which he is 
finally to abide. No author has more impres- 
sively displayed the misery of human life ; he 
laid himself under so much the stronger obliga- 
tion to unfold most explicitly the only effectual 
consolations, the true scheme of felicity as far as 
it is attainable on earth, and that delightful 
prospect of a better region, which has so often 
inspired exultation in the most melancholy situ- 
ations. No writer has more expressively illus- 
trated the rapidity of time, and the shortness of 
life ; he ought so much the more fully to have 
dwelt on the views of that great futurity at 
which his readers are admonished by the illus- 
tration that they will speedily arrive. No writer 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 44fi 

can make more poignant reflections on the 
pains of guilt ; was it not indispensable that he 
should oftener have directed the mind suffering 
this bitterest kind of distress to that great sacri- 
fice once offered for sin ? No writer represents 
with more striking, mortifying, humiliating truth 
the failure of human resolutions, and the fee- 
bleness of human efforts, in the contest with 
corrupt propensity, evil habit, and adapted 
temptation ; why did not this melancholy ob- 
servation and experience prompt a very frequent 
recollection, and emphatical expression of the 
importance, of that assistance from on high, 
without which the divine word has so often re- 
peated the warning that our labours will fail ? 

In extending the censure to the Poets, it is 
gratifying to meet an exception in the most 
elevated of all their tribe. Milton's consecrated 
genius might harmoniously have mingled with 
the angels that announced the Messiah to be 
come, or that, on the spot and at the moment 
of his departure, predicted his coming again ; 
might have shamed to silence the muses of 
paganism ; or softened the pains of a christian 
martyr. Part of the poetical works of Young, 
those of Watts, and of Cowper, have placed 
them among the permanent benefactors of 
mankind ; as owing to them there is a popular 
poetry in the true spirit of Christianity ; a poetry 
which has imparted, and is destined to impart, 

G G 



450 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

the best sentiments to innumerable minds. 
Works of great poetical genius that should be 
thus faithful to true religion, might be regarded 
as trees by the side of that " river of the water 
of life/' having in their fruit and foliage a virtue 
to contribute to " the healing of the nations." — 
But on the supposition that there were a man 
sufficiently discerning, impartial, and indefati- 
gable for a research throughout the general 
body of our poetical literature, it would be cu- 
rious to see what kind of religious system, and 
what account of the state of man, as viewed 
under moral estimate, and in relation to the 
future destiny, would be afforded by a digested 
assemblage of all the most marked sentiments, 
supplied by the vast majority of the poets, for 
such a scheme of moral and religious doctrine. 
— But if it would be exceedingly amusing to 
observe the process and the fantastic result, it 
would in the next place be very sad to consider, 
that these fallacies have been insinuated by the 
charms of poetry into countless thousands of 
minds, with a beguilement that has, first, di- 
verted them from a serious attention to the 
gospel, then confirmed them in a habitual dis- 
like of it, and finally operated to betray some 
of them to the doom which, beyond the grave, 
awaits the neglect or rejection of the religion 
of Christ. 

You have probably seen Pope cited as a chris- 
tian poet, by some pious authors, whose anxiety 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 451 

to impress reluctant genius into an appearance 
of favouring Christianity, has credulously seized 
on any occasional verse, which seemed an echo 
of the sacred doctrines. No reader can exceed 
me in admiring the discriminative thought, the 
shrewd moral observation, the finished and feli- 
citous execution, and the galaxy of poetical 
beauties, which combine to give a peculiar lustre 
to the writings of Pope, But I cannot refuse 
to perceive, that almost every allusion in his 
lighter works to the names, the facts, and the 
topics, that specially belong to the religion of 
Christ, is in a style and spirit of profane banter ; 
and that, in most of his graver ones, where he 
meant to be dignified, he took the utmost care 
to divest his thoughts of all the mean vulgarity 
of christian associations. " Off, ye profane !" 
might seem to have been his signal to all evan- 
gelical ideas, when he began his Essay on Man ; 
and they were obedient, and fled; for if you 
detach the detail and illustrations, so as to lay 
bare the outline and general principles of the 
work, it will stand confest an elaborate attempt 
to redeem the whole theory of the condition and 
interests of man, both in life and death, from all 
the explanations imposed on it by an unphilo- 
sophical revelation from heaven. And in the 
happy riddance of this despised though celestial 
light, it exhibits a sort of moon-light vision, of 
thin impalpable abstractions, at which a specu- 
latist may gaze, with a dubious wonder whether 



452 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

they be realities or phantoms ; but which a 
practical man will in vain try to seize and turn 
to account ; and which an evangelical man will 
disdain to accept in exchange for those forms of 
truth which his religion brings to him as real 
living friends, instructors, and consolers ; which 
present themselves to him, at his return from 
a profitless adventure in that shadowy dreary 
region, with an effect like that of meeting the 
countenances of his affectionate domestic asso- 
ciates, on his awaking from the fantastic suc- 
cession of vain efforts and perplexities, among 
strange objects, incidents, and people, in a 
bewildering dream. — But what deference to 
Christianity was to be expected, when such a 
man as Bolingbroke was the genius whose im- 
parted splendour was to illuminate, and the 
demigod* whose approbation was to crown, the 
labours which, according to the wish and pre- 
sentiment of the poet, were to conjoin these 
two venerable names in endless fame ? 

If it be said for some parts of these dim 
speculations, that though Christianity comes for- 
ward as the practical dispensation of truth, yet 
there must be, in remote abstraction behind, 
some grand, ultimate, elementary truths, which 
this dispensation does not recognise, but even 
intercepts from our view by a system of less 
refined elements, in which doctrines of a more 

* He is so named somewhere in Pope's works. 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 453 

contracted, palpable, and popular form, of com- 
paratively local purport and relation, are im- 
posed in substitution for the higher and more 
general and abstracted truths — I answer, And 
what did the poet, or " the master of the poet 
and the song," know about those truths, and 
how did they come by their information? 

A serious observer must acknowledge with 
regret, that such a class of productions as 
novels, in which folly has tried to please in a 
greater number of shapes than the poet enu- 
merates in the Paradise of Fools, is capable of 
producing a very considerable effect on the moral 
taste of the community. A large proportion of 
them however are probably of too slight and 
insipid a consistence to have any more specifie 
counteraction to christian principles than that of 
mere folly in general ; excepting indeed that 
the most flimsy of them will occasionally con- 
tribute their mite of mischief, by alluding to a 
christian profession, in a manner that identifies 
it with the cant by which hypocrites have aped 
it, or the extravagance with which fanatics have 
inflated or distorted it. But a great and direct 
force of counteracting influence is emitted from 
those, which eloquently display characters of 
eminent vigour and virtue, when it is a virtue 
having no basis in religion ; a factitious thing 
resulting from the mixture of dignified pride 
with generous feeling ; or constituted of those 



454 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE 

philosophical principles which are too often 
accompanied, in these works, by an avowed or 
strongly intimated contempt of the interference 
of any religion, especially the christian. If the 
case is mended in some of these productions 
into which an awkward religion has found its 
way, it is rather because the characters excite 
less interest of any kind, than because any 
which they do excite is favourable to religion. 
No reader is likely to be impressed with the 
dignity of being a christian by seeing, in one 
of these works, an attempt to combine that 
character with the fine gentleman, by means of 
a most ludicrous apparatus of amusements and 
sacraments, churches and theatres, morning- 
prayers and evening-balls. Nor will it perhaps 
be of any great service to the christian cause, 
that some others of them profess to exemplify 
and defend, against the cavils and scorn of 
infidels, a religion of which it does not appear 
that the writers would have discovered the 
merits, had it not been established by law. One 
may doubt whether any one will be more than 
amused by the venerable priest, who is intro- 
duced probably among libertine lords and giddy 
girls, to maintain the sanctity of terms, and 
attempt the illustration of doctrines, which 
these well-meaning writers do not perceive that 
the worthy gentleman's college, diocesan, and 
library, have but very imperfectly enabled him 
to understand. If the reader even wished to be 



TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 455 

more than amused, it is easy to imagine how 
much he would be likely to be instructed and 
affected, by such an illustration or defence of 
the christian religion, as the writer of a fashion- 
able novel would deem a graceful or admissible 
expedient for filling up his plot. 

One cannot close such a review of our fine 
writers without melancholy reflections. That 
cause which will raise all its zealous friends to a 
sublime eminence on the last and most solemn 
day the world has to behold, and will make 
them great for ever, presented its claims full in 
sight of each of these authors in his time. The 
very lowest of those claims could not be less 
than a conscientious solicitude to beware of 
every thing that could in any point injure the 
sacred cause. This claim has been slighted by 
so many as have lent attraction to an order of 
moral sentiments greatly discordant with its 
principles. And so many are gone into eter- 
nity under the charge of having employed their 
genius, as the magicians their enchantments 
against Moses, to counteract the Saviour of the 
world. 

Under what restrictions, then, ought the study 
of polite literature to be conducted ? I cannot 
but have foreseen that this question must return 
at the end of these observations ; and I am sorry 
to have no better answer to give than before, 
when the question came in the way, inconveni- 
ently enough, to perplex the conclusion to be 



456 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE, &C. 

drawn from the considerations on the tendency 
of the classical literature. Polite literature will 
necessarily continue to be a large department 
of the grand school of intellectual and moral 
cultivation. The evils therefore which it may 
contain, will as certainly affect in some degree 
the minds of the successive pupils, and teachers 
also, as the hurtful influence of the climate, or 
of the seasons, will affect their bodies. To be 
thus affected, is a part of the destiny under 
which they are born, in a civilized country. It 
is indispensable to acquire the advantage ; it 
is inevitable to incur the evil. The means of 
counteraction will amount, it is to be feared, 
to no more than palliatives. Nor can these be 
proposed in any specific method. All that I 
can do, is, to urge on the reader of taste the 
very serious duty of continually recalling his 
mind, and if he be a parent or preceptor, of 
cogently representing to those he instructs, the 
real character of religion as exhibited in the 
christian revelation, and the reasons which com- 
mand an inviolable adherence to it. 



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